Lovely girls in lovely clothes, and huge dragons with magicians and jugglers. The Chinese theatre is full of such things, carried to a fine art, but this was more relaxed after-dinner stuff. It was accompanied by a band of varying size, sometimes two, sometimes six. The show was brief but ended with high-spirits. A China not easily recognised.
Music begins Croatia's offering.
Its melodies and metaphors are pre-Baroque, with a wash of the Greek folkloric. Croatia's tunes seem to flow sadly, seductively, from some place without name or date, possessed of an erotic allure related to no place at all. They vibrate like stars and project a strong musical identity, a way of sounding that is inimitable. Not even Slav voices have that particular float. In this programme, it is the Croatian part that assaults the imagination.