Tabaluga

The little green Dragon Tabaluga is a puppet character, who lives in the fictional place "Greenland". He is around 100 dragon-years old (70,000 human years, as one year for a dragon is 700 for a human). He is the creation of a German Rock musician, Peter Maffay, children's song writer Rolf Zuckowski and the author Gregor Rottschalk. The artist Helme Heine gave Tabaluga his appearance.

The musical "Tabaluga & Lilli" celebrated its premiere on 24 September 1999 in the TheatrO CentrO, Oberhausen, and ran there until 30 June 2001. The little dragon amongst other things, managed to unite the High Society of German musical actors, with stars such as Andreas Bieber, Ross Antony, Paul Kribbe and Carolin Fortenbacher.

The First studio album "Tabaluga or the journey to reason." (1983) was the step to success: there followed in the course of the years some Helme Heine books, four Studio albums, a resounding tour and many TV Cartoons, which are Broadcast in over 100 countries round the world. Over 100 kindergartens and child care groups carry the word "Tabaluga" in their names.
Flying Bark Animation (previously known as Yoram Gross Films) has also produced an animated cartoon series of Tabaluga. In this series, Tabaluga is the last of the dragons and the crown-prince of Greenland, a magical place inhabited by talking animals of many different species. Tabaluga must defend his home from two rival kingdoms on either side of Greenland; a frigid arctic tundra, ruled by the evil snowman Arktos and a searing desert, ruled by an evil sand-spirit named Humsin.

Tabaluga on TV

In Tabaluga tivi, the television show (90 min.), you will see the little green dragon, "Tabaluga", his friend "Happy" (a snow hare) and his enemy "Arktos", the wicked snowman. In the show, two teams play against each other in 5 competition rounds to win prizes for themselves, and to win the contents of a treasure chest, which they can donate to their school, a children's home, etc. The broadcast is transmitted by ZDF and also KI.KA. In Summer 2005 the show celebrated its 400th transmission. The show is made for ZDF in co-production with Munich Production Company MingaMedia and is made in the Bavaria-Studios in Unterföhring, near Munich.

Broadcast History

The cartoon series of Tabaluga originally shown on ZDF in Germany is presently being shown in the UK on the following channels:

*UK
** Cartoon Network (1998-2000)
** POP! (January 2007 - 26th February 2007 )
*Ireland
** TG4
*Poland
** TVP1
** Mini Mini (2006-present)
*Portugal
** Cartoon Network (1998-2000)
** Canal Panda (2001-2005)
** RTP 2
*Romania
**TVR 1
*Czech Republic
**TV Prima (2008)
*France
**TF1
*Ukraine
**ТЕТ

"History"

* 1983: "Tabaluga or the journey to reason.", First Concept Album.
* 1986: "Tabaluga and the bright silence.", Second Concept Album.
* 1993: "Tabaluga & Lilli" (with Alexis playing and singing the part of "Lilli")
* 1994: Tour of "Tabaluga & Lilli", 90 appearances with a total audience of around 700,000 people; the tour version included some songs from the first concept album.
* 1997: Tabaluga on TV: Cartoon Episodes in "Tabaluga tivi" on ZDF
* 1998: Tabaluga premieres on Cartoon Network Europe
* 1999: "TheatrO CentrO" in Oberhausen showed the premiere of the "Tabaluga & Lilli" musical, which was essentially the same as the tour version, but with a different cast
* 2001: Second Series (26 New Episodes, again on ZDF and KI.KA)
* 2002: All 52 episodes are repeated again on television.
* 2002: "Tabaluga and the Gift of Luck".
* 2003: Tour of "Tabaluga and the Gift of Luck".

In 2004, Tabaluga viatja buscant el seny - Tabaluga, or The journey to reason, became the first of the Tabaluga stories to be translated into Catalan. The story was recorded onto CD and Cassette, and was very popular.

It was also staged for the first time in 2005 in Majorca, and drew an exceptionally large audience. The singers, Josep Carreras and Cris Juanico, along with Udo Jürgens and Peter Maffay bought the concept to the stage.

=External links=
* [http://www.tabaluga.com] Tabaluga- The Official Page de icon
* [http://www.tabaluga-stiftung.de] The Tabaluga children's Charity de icon
* [http://www.tivi.de] Tivi on ZDF
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ7GMfqxx1c] Opening of English Tabaluga
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA4uUdmMPc0] Closing theme tune of English Tabaluga

See also

[http://www.flyingbark.com.au] Flying Bark Animation: Producers of the Tabaluga Animated Cartoon (Flying Bark is an amalgamation of Yoram Gross Films and EMTV Germany)

Links to people listed on other Wikipediæ

Peter Maffay (Deutsch)

Helme Heine (Deutsch)

Rolf Zuckowski (Deutsch)