Pupi

While pronounced the same way as what babies do in their diapers, pupi are actually marionette-like puppets. The art of making and using these puppets used to be a widespread art-form throughout the region of Sicily near Catania, but it is now dying. Only a few people continue the traditional way of producing and using the puppets. We spent our evening outside Catania in Acireale at the Opera dei Pupi Turi Grasso. All of the puppets are built by Turi Grasso, the pupi master, and costumed by his wife. The master himself narrated the action while two of his sons and a third person manipulated the puppets. Other family members are included in the business, but were not present for our visit.

After a brief introduction to the art of puppet making we saw a production of the Legend of Roland. The historical figure Roland was a general under Charlemagne who died defending the rearguard against the Basques at the Battle of Roncesvalles. The legend is something else which involved lots of manipulation, backstabbing and fighting scenes. Stomping noises from wooden blocks attached to the puppeteer’s feet provided the sound effects as swords clashed against shields and puppets hurled themselves against each other from opposite sides of the stage. There were some nifty special effects including one puppet whose head split in two and a bloody eruption from the throat of another. The show lasted over an hour with a brief intermission so that they could pick up all the slain puppets in preparation for the final death scene.  Interestingly, only one puppet in the entire production was female, Angelica. For better or worse, the entire evening was done in Italian so I didn't get as much out of it as I might have otherwise.