From secret plot outlines to published text – The texts for the Palermitan opera dei pupi from the beginning of the 20th century to today.
Anna LEONE (January 2023 – June 2023)
Presentation
The opera dei pupi is one of the most well-known armed rod marionette theatre in Europe. It was born in Southern Italy, between Naples and Sicily, in the middle of the 19th century at a time when rod puppets theatres specialised in the chivalrous repertoire, performing long cycles of shows on the Matter of France as it was told in chivalrous Italians poems from the Renaissance, for instance Ariosto’s Orlando furioso or Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. From then on, the opera dei pupi and especially its Sicilian version drew the attention of specialists. In 1884, Giuseppe Pitrè (1841-1916), the leading expert on popular Sicilian traditions at the time, wrote a first research paper on this form of theatre [1]. From the 1950s onwards, when most theatres were losing their audience and closing down, Antonio Pasqualino (1931-1995), a Sicilian intellectual and surgeon who had been passionate about pupi since childhood, dedicated his life to the conservation of the opera dei pupi. The author of important books on armed rod marionettes in Southern Italy [2], Pasqualino founded in 1965 the Associazione per la conservazione delle tradizioni popolari (Association for the Conservation of Folk Traditions) and in 1975 he founded the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette in Palermo. In 2001, thanks to the initiative of the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette, the Sicilian opera dei pupi was inscribed by the UNESCO on the first list of the “Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”, that became in 2008 the Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Nowadays, numerous publications are dedicated to this form of theatre [3] and to contemporary puppeteers, for instance Mimmo Cuticchio [4] (1948), a puppeteer, stage director and actor who brought important contributions to the renewal of the opera dei pupi, creating performances in which the pupi, often manipulated in full-view, talk with actors, narrators, dancers or musicians.
The extensive bibliography that has already been dedicated to the Sicilian opera dei pupi includes several publications on the armed rod marionette repertoire, and on what had been their main performance for a long time: the achievements of Charlemagne and his paladins. Antonio Pasqualino [5] and other specialists took a particular interest in the sources of this repertoire and in the ideology of such a long performance which, since it was performed in several episodes, could last for over a year. More recently, Anna Carocci [6] studied the link between the plot outlines of Sicilian puppeteers and the chivalrous poems of the Renaissance, analysing the texts from different traditions (from Palermo, Catania, Naples or Apulia) and different times (from the ancient long cycles to the contemporary performances).
This post-doctoral project offers to continue the research on the pupi repertoire by focusing on a less analytic aspect, for we will analyse both the evolution of the texts and the evolution of their function over time. To achieve this, we will take into account the entirety of the opera dei pupi repertoire (including farces and stories that are not focused on the chivalrous universe), and focus more particularly on the repertoire of the Cuticchio family. Indeed, their repertoire has continued to expend thanks to the work of Mimmo Cuticchio, of his siblings Nino (1952) and Anna (1945), and, recently, of his son Giacomo (1982). In the middle of the 20th century, Giacomo Cuticchio (1917-1985), father of Mimmo, used to create his shows on the spot, after taking a look at his plot outlines – which he kept jealously hidden from the eyes of even his children and assistants. He thus had to give all the indications on the scene to be prepared (scenery, characters) during the representation itself. Mimmo Cuticchio has since written new texts that he shows to his assistants during the staging of the shows, and that he has sometimes published [7]. In these texts, dialogues can be fully written, even when the puppeteers reinterpret them and continue to improvise on stage. From the secret plot outlines, which used to be a reminder during long performances, to the published text, how did the writing for the opera dei pupi transform?
[1] Giuseppe Pitrè, « Le tradizioni cavalleresceh popolari in Sicilia », Romania, 1884, t. 13, n. 50-51, p. 315 398. [Online: https://www.persee.fr/doc/roma_0035-8029_1884_num_13_50_6304]
[2] See for instance: Antonio Pasqualino, L’opera dei pupi, Palermo, Sellerio, 2008 and A. Pasqualino, Le vie del cavaliere. Epica medievale e memoria popolare, Milano, Bompiani, 1992.
[3] In particular on the Catanese opera dei pupi (Bernadette Majorana, Pupi e attori. Ovvero l’ opera dei pupi a Catania. Storia e documenti, Roma, Bulzoni, 2008) and on the Neapolitans pupi (Alberto Baldi, L’opulenta scena. Granitiche e trasformistiche, sincretiche ed eretiche vistosità del teatro dei pupi partenopeo, Napoli, Arte Tipografica Editrice, 2012).
[4] See in particular the analysis from Valentina Venturini: Valentina Venturini (dir.), Dal cunto all’opera dei pupi. Il teatro di Cuticchio, Roma, Dino Audino Editore, 2003 ; V. Venturini, Nato e cresciuto tra i pupi, Napoli, Editoriale Scientifica, 2017 .
[5] In addition to the analysis on the works already mentioned, Pasqualino analysed the pupi repertoire in A. Pasqualino (dir.), Dal testo alla rappresentazione. Le prime imprese di Carlo Magno, Palerme, Laboratorio Antropologico Universitario, 1986 ; A. Pasqualino, Rerum Palatinorum fragmenta, éd. Alessandro Napoli, Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2018.
[6] Anna Carocci, Il poema che cammina. La letteratura cavalleresca nell’opera dei pupi, Palermo, Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2019.
[7] In 2008, for his first publication, he published five texts: Mimmo Cuticchio, L’opera dei pupi dalla piccola alla grande scena, Palermo, Associazione Figli d’Arte Cuticchio, 2008.
Last updated : 26/11/2024