The Sicilian Puppets
History, arts and Tradition of the marionettes in Sicily
Traditional theatre very popular in the entire Sicily by the half of the XIX century until the years fifties of the twentieth century, the Opera dei Pupi is today one of the symbols, although both the contents (the history of the Paladin of France) and the means (puppets) had foreign origins. Nevertheless, acquired specific characteristics which distinguished it from the generic arts of marionettes, the Opera dei Pupi fascinated so much the Sicilians to became a daily exhibition (??)
Later on, its popularity declined due to the advent of television, and only few families of pupari maintained this tradition (the Napoli in Catania and the Cuticchio in Palermo), receiving the international recognition in 2001 by the UNESCO as cultural heritage of the humanity.
The Sicilian Opera dei Pupi (Opra) is a characteristic theatre where the puppets, manoeuvred by the puppeteers on forefronts appositely created, represent the exploits of the greatest medieval Chevaliers, real or legendary, who defended Christianity against the Saracens. In particular, the most celebrated topic was the battle between the Charlemagne’s heroes and the Muslims who, invading the Iberian peninsula, threatened the French reign and the entire Christian Europe.
According to the historiography based on a hypothesis rather thanreal facts, the marionette theatre of the chivalrous tradition, already popular in the sixteenth-century in Spain, introduced in France in the XVII century and spread in Italy in the following century, was imported in Sicily from the city of Naples in the first decades of the nineteenth-century. In the island, this acquired rapidly specific characteristic who distinguished the Opera dei Pupifrom the generic arts of marionettes. The Sicilian marionettes were in fact covered by elaborated metal armours and the directional thread of the right hand was substituted by an iron staff, which allowed the marionette to make more direct and careful movements, especially during battles and duels. Also moral themes proposed during the opera plays, always based on a high sense of justice and respect for freedom, were a distinctive trait of the Opera dei Pupi, perfectly tuned with the Sicilian soul, having great popular success.
In those years, in fact, the difficult economic and political situation causing the great revolts of the 1848 and the 1859-1860 against the feudal dynasty of the Bourbons, the dissatisfaction for the exorbitant reign of the Savoy and the newborn greedy Italian bourgeoisie, made the Sicilians to identify themselves with the heroes of the Opra fighting against the evil and the injustices represented by the Saracens and the Christian betrayers.
As often happened into the history and the Sicilian culture, also the Opera dei Pupi had its centres of interest in the two main cities of the island, were two important theatrical traditions emerged: Palermo and Catania. In both cities, expert pupeteers, on the basis of mainly oral narrations, often genially adapted and personalized, suggested plots taken from the old poems of chivalry, whose main expression is the repertory of the Carlovingian subjects such as the Storia dei Paladini di Francia. The play, which lasted around two hours divided into three acts, brought to life the loves and gestures of kings, heroic Christian paladins, noble Saracens, beautiful maidens, magicians and necromancers, who subdued devils, enormous giants and terrible dragoons. Such characters were all personified by puppets
covered by shining armours and precious clothes. Their dimension was really smaller in Palermo(around 80 cm and 13 kg) and bigger in Catania(around 1,30 metre and 30 kg). Through particular scenic effects, the plays were created by wise artisanship with wooden bone structure and entirely spectacular: among them we may remember the unexpected bleeding of the injured or dying puppets, the utilization of elaborated effects which reproduced fountains from where blood was coming out and the simulation of burning cities.
The characters of the Opera dei Pupi were easily recognizable to the public by standardized costumes and distinctive voices. A king, in fact, was always wearing a dress particularly rich and sumptuous and recognizable by a crown which, if surmounted by a cross, indicated the title of Charlemagne’s Emperor; the Christian knights were wearing a complete armour, enriched by a short skirt and a mantel, and their faces and voices were always kind.; the Saracens were instead recognizable by the typical turban, the half-moons on their armours, the big moustaches on their faces, and the voices often hollow and deep; the women used to wear the armours showing their breasts; finally the Magonzesi the Christians betrayals, were easily recognizable by their evil faces, the moustaches calati, the black clothes, and the macabre sign on their armour, like the bat.
According to the plot of the Comedy of the Arts, the puppets histories were represented subdivided into sequences of recurrent and tested scenes such as: the advice, the marriage, the hero who saves the beloved one or the band of mercenaries, the submission or the surrender of the defeated, the duel and the battle and so on..
With such characteristics, starting from Palermo and Catania, the Opera dei Pupi spread around Sicily to such an extent that at the end of the XIX century almost all the cities had their own puppets companies. Sustained by the great success obtained, they had the chance to improve their arts so that puppets and scenes were more and more detailed and embellished. The narrative materials went through an accurate selection performed by Giusto Lodico: following the chivalrous books of the Italian literature of the XV and XVI centuries, he codified between the years 1858-60 the Storia dei Paladini di Francia, a fundamental book of the Opera dei Pupi, collecting into one history the deeds of Charlemagne and his paladins . Such an imposing work was followed later on by many others, always published in instalments: the Guido Santo, the Trabazio, the remake of the Guerrin Meschino. In Catania, the puppeteers created other histories, performing the gestures of Erminio della Stella d’Oro, Guidodi Santa Croce and Uzeta, a legendary hero from Catania.
Manianti e pruituri
In the catanese Opera dei Pupi, the manianti are those who used their skilled hands to manoeuvre marionettes through irons and manoeuvring wires. They were hidden to the audience by the scenes, skies and backdrops, placed on a lifted manoeuvring bridge, such as u scannapoggiu. According to their specialization on combating figures, the manianti are distinguished in manianti d’aritta and manianti d’a manca. Long and difficult is the apprenticeship which allows the passionate spectator to become maniante of the Opera dei Pupi. Before he must be a good pruituri, that is an assistant who brings the puppets to the manianti to come on stage. Later on, ‘u pruituri will climb on the scannapoggiu to keep some soldier or puppet dressed as a pageboy. Then he will learn how to make the puppets walk and, little by little, all movements of gestural code and the combat figure, till the day when he could maniari and cummattiri an important character.
I parraturi
In the Opera dei Pupi ‘i parraturi, the parlatori are those who give their voices to male characters, and ‘a parratrici, the voices to female characters. The parlatori, other than improvising a dramatic dialogue and adapting for the stage, he always has the role as director of the show. The parlatori and the manianti were in perfect synchrony of acting and making gestures, bringing soul and life to puppets. The voices of the parlatori assume, from time to time, different tunes and timbres to better characterize the frank loyalty, the lovable joking, the arrogance and the perfidy of every single character. Sweet and persuasive were the female voices in love dialogues, or fierce and combative when they used to play Christian or Saracen heroines.
The language used by the parlatori were strongly influenced by aulic Italian of the humanist and renaissance romance of chivalry and by the versification of melodrama. Besides, as already happened in the ancient Homeric poems, some sequences of words or phrases were often repeated (the typical formulas of oral tradition) that, being the dramatic plot improvised by the speakers, allowed to characterize the many characters and to control a great number of histories.
The arrangements
In the theatre jargon of the Catanese Opera, the arrangements are all those techniques which creates particular effects of staging, such as blood, draught wires and pyrotechnic effects. The first, through hidden containers and conduits, made the red blood coming out from an injured puppet or the transformation of water into blood in the fountain of the “Consiglio della Valle”. The second one implies major attention and competence, so that the armies of a badly wounded knight may drop down and, through a gentle and careful game, Orlando is madly in love with Angelica or the passage of an object from a puppet’s hand into another one’s. The pyrotechnic effects of Bengal and Greek pitch allow the dragoons to vomit flames, the lightning to brake over something and the cities to be destroyed by the fire.
Uncomparable masters of effects were: Sebastiano Zappalà and Natale Napoli. Pippo Napoli was very good in the arrangement of draught wires. Alessandro Napoli at the moment, takes care of special effects during the mis- en–scène of the Napoli’s Brothers theatre.
The Armours
The armours of Catanese marionettes are decorated with brass, copper, silver and are entirely embossed according to traditional techniques and rules inherited by ancient ladle masters. We distinguish two working procedures: the embossed work with puntiddi on a plumb plate, which allows a large variety of borders, ornaments and floral and geometric decorations; and the embossed work with pole and rolling chock (?) which is the difficult technique of designing embossed figures and ornaments on metal plates. Fiorenzo Napoli, through a personal research, has enriched these techniques by integrating refined goldsmithry and has transferred his knowledge to his son David.
The costumes
Traditionally the women of the puppeteer’s family were taking care of cutting, sewing, and decorating the rich puppets’ costumes. The clothes and mantels of kings, queens and knights were enriched by embellishments, passementeries and often embroidered or painted. The puppets’ clothes were embroidered by Giuseppina Tomaselli, the wife of Don Gaetano Napoli. While the mantels were painted in oil by Francesca Napoli, the cousin of Pippo and Natale. Today the costumes are made by Italia Chiesa and, above all, Agnese Torrisi, Fiorenzo Napoli’s wife.
The history
The Chanson de geste and the chivalrous tradition
In Sicily
The oldest and most played subject of the Opera deiPupi is the famous route of Roncisvalle, the historic battle where Charlemagne’s troops were defeated in Spain in 778 during the Arabs’ domination. In that period, in the Mediterranean basin, three important politic realities emerged: in eastern Europe the Byzanthine empire (directly descending from the ancient Eastern Roman Empire) to whom belonged also the south of Italy and Sicily; in the south the young and powerful Arab dominion, which extended from Spain to Samarcanda; in the northern side the French reign of Charlemagne, who reinforced in those years his hegemony overthe territories today corresponding to France, Germany, and North Italy.
Considered by the Roman Church the bulwark of Christianity in western world , Charlemagne – crowned Emperor in 800- committed himself to liberate the Iberian peninsula from the Arabs, following the proposal of a Muslim lord who disagreed with other Muslims. Therefore, he organised, an expedition aimed at the annexation of new territories. But, after the initial successes, urged by the necessity of facing a new revolt of the Saxons beyond the Rhine, the Christian troops finally retreated through the impervious Mounts Pyrenees. In the year 778 a. C. the French were moving towards their own country. The king and the majority of the troops were protected by the rearguard. Guided by the brave Orlando, that band of soldiers was unexpectedly destroyed by the Basques (in the epic tradition they were assimilated to the Arabs, as enemies of the French). What happened before and what followed this historic event and the exploits of the single characters, both Christians and Saracens, gave origin to a great number of histories in the tradition of the knights and, later on, in that of Sicilian puppeteers. The route of Roncisvalle became a legend narrated either in France or in other European countries. Therefore, around the XI century, (almost three hundreds years after the happening) a process of codification of those legendary event begun. As a consequence, the military enterprises – that historically lasted only few months – extended along seven years. In those years, the Christian Europe regained its supremacy over the Arabs, through great military enterprises: the conquest of Spain, the Norman conquest of Sicily, the crusades in the Holy Earth. Within such an historic and cultural context, considering the economic-political structure based on feudalism, the legendary events of French paladins were particularly popular over the European aristocratic courts. During the Renaissance, when the world of the knights and swords was disappearing –by the coming of the less heroic fire guns – the epic tradition developed in accordance with the new epoch. New characters, therefore, were created, especially female characters, such as Bradamante, Angelica; other, like Astolfo, once more marginal, gained more importance while the histories, whose subject was the loves of the paladins and their wanderings in far distant countries or in magic places, increased: in particular we remember the exploits of the paladin Orlando and his unrequited love for the pagan princess Angelica. The humanist and renaissance Italian literature took inspiration from chivalrous poems: the Morgante by Luigi Pulci, the Orlando Innamoratoby Matteo Maria Boiardo, the Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, until the Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso. Extinguished the literary and cultural enthusiasm for chivalrous poems , only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the Romanticism, in Europe developed a new interest for the history of knights and the Middle Age in general. Fostered by the nationalist turmoils of those years, such an interest spread all over Europe, especially in France, England and Germany during the all XIX century. In Italy, where the Middle Age did not correspond to the beginning of national states, but instead of small regional states, this nineteenth century culture assumed different connotations according to the various Italian states until 1861, when the real or legendary local characters were revaluated and magnified in the literature as well as in the arts.
In Sicily such a culture had a major influence when the island became the harbour-base for the enterprises of the newborn reign of Italy in Africa (1.911). In that period marked by easy colonial enthusiasms the Sicilians re-evoked the battles happened in the XI century between the Arabs and the Normans who conquered the island in 1061, with a gradual introduction of Catholicism. Thanks to all these reasons, the Opera dei Pupi had a period of great popularity in Sicily, until the years fifties, when the Sicilian puppet theatre started to decline because of the diffusion of cinema and television. Many companies abandoned their ancient job and the puppeteers, defeated by the “progress” had to sell their own equipments: such as puppets, scenes, boards, pieces of theatre and musical instruments. But, in the middle of the seventies, the few survived families of Sicilian puppeteers (among which the Napoli in Catania and the Cuticchio in Palermo), carefully selecting their repertory and raising the artistic level of their performances, were able to save what remained of this ancient expression of Sicilian arts and to continue the tradition of their fathers.
To keep alive the attention towards the puppet theatre has undoubtedly given its contribution the International Museum of Puppets in Palermo, established by Antonio Pasqualino in 1975 (who every year organizes the Morgana Festival, an exhibition of traditional puppets theatre) and in 2001 a major recognition by the UNESCO, that acknowledges the Opera dei Pupi as National Heritage of the Humanity. But, this new age is very different from the previous period. Today the public is more occasional and does not know the plots of the history represented, and is unfamiliar with the larger context of chivalric narrative, unlike the traditional public of the past. Therefore, today the repertory is drastically reduced to a few selected pieces believed to be most suited to hold the attention of the audience.