A string quartet played for a Barcelona opera house full of houseplants in the early days of the COVID pandemic. The houseplants that “attended” the Barcelona performance were donated afterward to hospital workers. The event has inspired a children’s book called The Enchanted Symphony.
Illustrations © 2023 Elly MacKay
In the latest children’s book from mother-daughter duo Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, a village subdued by a mysterious purple fog finds joy again by serenading an audience of appreciative houseplants.
The protagonist is young Piccolino, whose father is the maestro of the town opera house. Even though the fog is keeping people at home, the pair continue cleaning the empty building. One day Piccolino tinkers with the piano, and notices that the drooping plants in the lobby seem to brighten at the sound of music.
So they embark on a mission, collecting every houseplant they can find and enlisting orchestra members for a special concert. When the day comes, the unsuspecting musicians take the stage and tune their instruments. Then the velvet curtains open to reveal an auditorium full of greenery.
“The astonished musicians began to play tentatively at first, but gradually building in strength and tempo as the joy of making music again lifted, their spirits and the plants responded in kind, nodding and swaying, their stems standing taller and firmer, the leaves rustling in appreciation,” the book reads. “And then the fog itself began to lift.”
As whimsical as it looks, and as fanciful as it sounds, The Enchanted Symphony is inspired by a true story.
In June 2020, after several quiet months,…
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