The Blue Bird (play)

The Blue Bird
Mytyl (Alisa Koonen) and Tyltyl (Sofya Halyutina) in the MAT's 1908 production
Written by	Maurice Maeterlinck
Date premiered	30 September 1908 (1908-09-30)

The Blue Bird (French: L'Oiseau bleu) is a 1908 play by Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck. It premiered on 30 September 1908 at Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre and has been turned into several films and a TV series. The French composer Albert Wolff wrote an opera (first performed at the N.Y. Metropolitan in 1919) based on Maeterlinck's original play, and Maeterlinck's innamorata Georgette Leblanc produced a novelization.

The story is about a girl called Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl seeking happiness, represented by The Blue Bird of Happiness, aided by the good fairy Bérylune.

Maeterlinck also wrote a relatively little known sequel to The Blue Bird, entitled The Betrothal; or, The Blue Bird Chooses.

Adaptations

Film

• The Blue Bird (1910 film), a silent film starring Pauline Gilmer and Olive Walter
• The Blue Bird (1918 film), a silent film directed by Maurice Tourneur
• The Blue Bird (1940 film), starring Shirley Temple, directed by Walter Lang
• The Blue Bird (1970 film), a Soviet animated film
• The Blue Bird (1976 film), a joint Soviet-American production directed by George Cukor
• Blue Bird, filmed in Togo. Directed by Gust Van Den Berghe and presented at the 2011 Cannes festival.

Television

• Maeterlinck's Blue Bird: Tyltyl and Mytyl's Adventurous Journey, a 1980 Japanese animated TV series

Radio

• The Blue Bird was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on the December 24, 1939, broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Shirley Temple and Nelson Eddy.

Opera

• L'oiseau bleu, 1919 opera by Albert Wolff, libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck based on his play.

Mentions in other works

RahXephon

Blue birds appear as symbols and one of the characters is named "Michiru", which is the Japanese name for Mytyl.

Eureka Seven

Three of the characters were named after the author's name, his surname being divided: Maurice, the eldest of Eureka's children; Maeter, the second oldest; and Linck, the youngest. The book itself also appears briefly in the series being read by one of the characters.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Kyon seemingly randomly asks Haruhi if she has read The Bluebird of Happiness. This initially appears to be a random reference, however it has since been noted that the Land of Memory, the Palace of Night and the Kingdom of the Future which appear in L'Oiseau bleu may each correspond to one of Haruhi's three unusual companions (the aliens, the espers, and the time travellers, respectively.) This is also a reference as to how what Haruhi is searching for (aliens, time travelers, espers, or anything out of the ordinary) is around her every day. In the manga, Kyon comments on it as a "children's book". He refers to his "Bluebird of Happiness" on several occasions later in the novel.

Ballet Shoes

In the novel Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild and the television adaptations of it, Pauline and Petrova Fossil play Tyltyl and Mytyl in their ballet academy's production of "The Blue Bird".

K-PAX

Prot helps one of the patients by assigning him three tasks, the first of which is to find the Bluebird of Happiness.

L'Oiseau bleu/Aoi Tori

Japanese TV drama from 1997 telling a "tale of tragic love between Yoshimori, a station employee at a quiet, rural station, and Kahori, the wife of the heir to a family fortune." Kahori's daughter Shiori is reading "L'Oiseau bleu" as a child and the story is cited several times during the 11 episodes.

Yellow Submarine

At the end of the movie, the Chief Blue Meanie says that "My cousin is the 'Bluebird of Happiness'". It also shows bluebirds on his head when he says this.

Birds in the Future

In this manga by Osamu Tezuka, one chapter is directly inspired by the play.

Jean Libon, Belgian painter 

He uses to call one of his exposition "L'oiseau bleu". Until this day, "L'oiseau bleu" is the symbol of his work, full of mystic and magic.

Pokémon

In Try for the Family Stone!, 616th episode of the anime featured in the twelfth season, two siblings called Ltyl and Mytyl (in the Japanese version) search for a Dusk Stone in order to evolve a Murkrow. The Pokémon Swablu and Altaria are also references to the titular bird, and were named "Tylt" and "Tyltalis" respectively in Japanese.

Maurice Maeterlinck commemorative coin

Bakemonogatari

In Nisio Osin's light novel, Kizumonogatari, Tsukihi Araragi asks her older brother Koyomi Araragi the question, "Where did Tyltyl and Mytyl find the Blue bird?". In Nekomonogatari (White) Tsubasa Tiger, the character Hanekawa Tsubasa mentions The Blue Bird in her soliloquy, about how one should find a Blue Bird if they don't have a home. She also ponders the possibility that just as the Blue Bird may be in someone's home, so, too, could the beast of misfortune lurk there.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

In Chapter 4 of the VN, Maria uses the tale of Tyltyl and Mytyl to explain why Ange can only see sadness in Maria's memories when she herself believed she was having a good time and likens the bluebird to happy Fragments.

Wandering Son

The chapter 96 is titled "Tyltyl and Mytyl", which is also a multiple pun: the Japanese title (Chiruchiru Michiru) can also be translated as "From the Very Bottom to the Top"; also, the japanerse book's title translation is "Aoi Tori", which is a reference to Aoi Hana, another Takako Shimura's work, and Wandering Son's main character, Shuichi NiTORI

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

One of the characters wears a pendant resembling a blue bird in a cage. In one of the game's scenes, she talks about the pendant's meaning to her, and its relation to Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird.

Other references

The Dutch school types Mytyl schools and Tyltyl schools are named after Mytyl and Tyltyl: they are for children with a physical disability and for children with both a physical and mental disability, respectively. The Scouting Nederland section for children with special needs (Extension Scouting) is named: "Blauwe Vogels" (Blue Birds).

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of "Maurice Maeterlinck's greatest contemporary success The Blue Bird", as it was termed, his play was selected as the main motif of a high-value collectors' coin: the Belgian 50 euro Maurice Maeterlinck commemorative coin, minted in 2008.

External links

• gutenberg.org, Complete Play (Project Gutenberg)