Do you think that was a real language being spoken/sung at the Saltimbanco show? I thought it was jibberish. Kittenblue thought it might have been Italian.
“Saltimbanco” is an Italian word but beyond that, the language used in the show (and all their other shows AFAIK) is an invented nonsense language. I think they do that deliberately to add an air of mystique. There are no spoken words in their shows either. I don’t remember ever hearing a spoken word after the warning not to smoke or take pictures.
Every so often there was some jibberish. The singing just seemed to be long tones “Ahhhhhh” or whatever. It was really fun–I had never seen it before.
I don’t know about Saltimbanco, but according to a Brazilian friend, at least one of the songs in Allegria or Mystere is in Portuguese.
Not true regarding Zumanity, which has lots of words, mostly, if not all, in English.
Somewhere at home I have my program from seeing Saltimbanco back when it toured (late '80’s, I think). It does specifically state that they are using nonsense created for the show, just gibberish. That was back before they introduced the idea of a featured singer accompanying the show.
Great days - I think I paid $10 or so to see that show next to the pier at Santa Monica.
Traditionally, the clowns/characters within Cirque productions speak in nonsense.
However, the songs themselves are usually written in a real language or a mixture. The eponymous song for Alegria, for example, is in Italian and English, and I’ve heard a fair bit of what is most definitely Spanish and French in other songs.
I’ve got varying degrees of fluency with all of these languages, so I can tell the difference between nonsense sounds or words that are meant to imitate the language and proper sentences.
It’s sometimes referred to as “cirqueish”.