On 24 and 25 December, the “cuntist” master brings the “religious and pagan” Nativity to the stage, handing down the Opera of Sicilian puppets, a Unesco heritage site
And there is Burliante the king of Soldanella and Uggero the Dane husband of the princess Almerina and Tuttofuoco the pagan magician who commands the Oxhead Devil and then Agramonte who is the son of Bernardo di Chiaramonte and marries Queen Lucietta d’Orsitania and they have two twins and the first Onofrio will be Malagigi and the second Bernard will be named by Viviano…
Is it never wrong? Ever a memory lapse? Never a slip? «Never», laughs Mimmo Cuticchio, the brilliant Maestro dei Pupi who received an honorary degree a month and a half ago from the Roma Tre University in Theatre, music and dance and famous as a «Unesco Man» representing the Opera of the ancient Sicilian puppets protected as « oral and intangible heritage of humanity”. On the other hand, he explains, “all my brothers are. My father said that “we were seven hundred and seven in the family: seven brothers and seven hundred pupi”». He admits that yes, of course, at the age of 74, in his daily life, he may have some gaps in his memory «but not on the names and roles of the puppets because the spectators maybe not, they wouldn’t notice it but they, the puppets, don’t tell me they would never forgive. Nor would I forgive myself.”
Because of this on 24 and 25 December, in the Teatro di via Bara all’Olivella in Palermothe showman who managed to bring the Opera dei Pupi and the Cunto all over the world overcoming every linguistic barrier («In Japan a martial arts master found such a bond between how I beat the rhythm with the stick and he with the katana who gave me one») gathered his puppets in a single nativity scene around the Bambineddu, the Madonna, St. Joseph, the ox and the donkey, including the Magi, in this case the Spanish brothers Marsilio, Bulugante and Falserone. «All together, pagans and Christians. To remind us how important peace is, especially today”.
Of course, there will also be hints on the famous fights that bewitched old people and children with the clanging of swords: «Abbassanu li visore, / isanu li lanci, puncinu i cavaddi / e currinu unu di fronte all’avutru…». The dominant theme, however, will be the Nativity recalled in the same Cycle of the Paladins of France that Mimmo’s father, Giacomo, puppeteer in the strict sense (puppet builder) and traveling theater actor, he carried around the Sicilian districts building himself in this or that village, depending on whether it was summer or winter, a seasonal theater-stage where wife, children and relatives slept, ate and performed an episode of the interminable chivalrous marathon every evening.
«The Carolingian cycle, I still have my father’s manuscripts, he took away 371 evenings. To finish it we had to come back, spacing the seasons, for four or five years. And people became so attached that one night, while we were all sleeping among the puppets, a man knocked on the door crying. It was Don Calorio who every evening brought the chair from home (there were boys who loaded even ten relatives’ chairs on their heads) because he went crazy for Rinaldo and he couldn’t rest that the episode ended with his Rinaldo collapsed to the ground and prisoner of the sorceress Gabina». To restore his serenity Giacomo had to take him in front of the proscenium and show him his beloved Pupo unharmed: he was hanging there ready to go back on stage.
It was a poor Italy. Where the laborers and families could not even pay for the ticket: «There were countries where there was absolutely no money in circulation. Someone brought a chicken, others some vegetables from the garden, a ricotta or a piece of cheese…”. How many spectators came? “The whole country came.” Even his birth, says Mimmo in To arms, Knights! (Donzelli, 2018) was a piece of theatre: «The hall was already packed when my mother started having labor pains; my grandfather then let everyone out, sent for the mammana and the bed was prepared for the birth. (…) Finally, at dawn on March 30, I was born. “Giacumè, ti nasciu u masculiddu, sì cuntentu?” said my grandfather. And my father: “Certu ca sugnu cuntentu, I’m sorry sulu ca mi fici perdiri the proceeds of the evening!” I began to hear about Orlando and Rinaldo when I still could hardly pronounce the words mum and dad».
Until cinema arrived even in the most remote countries: «One day my father bought two projectors, the Ducati 16 mm brand. The screen was the wall of a house and I, a little boy, went around with the horn: “Sunday everyone come here. The film The beggar’s daughter we put! You pay nothing, a voluntary offer, but bring your own chair!” We collected the offers before the second half». When TV arrived in many homes and bars, that was the end. The last performance of the traveling cycle was in Cefalù in 1969: «They had opened the Club Mediterranée, the villagers paid 300 lire, the tourists even 1,000. My father, after so many years of hard work, understood that he could have a different audience. The tourists didn’t understand talking but were fascinated by the actions, he chose to please them by perhaps introducing twists that had nothing to do with it, such as killing some snakes or letting the devil out. I chose to pull straight. I went to Paris, studied other ways, built “my” puppets with other masters to save as much as possible of that epic poem».
And if the father-master closed the year on December 24 with the end of Orlando (the most beloved Pupo who with Rinaldo “made the pasta drop”, that is, he fed everyone) and on the 25th he left again with the bambiniddu, he decided to focus on a different Nativity. More “secular”. Taking up the stories of many puppets also born of special “madonnas” in a cave, a stable, a ruin surrounded by lifelong companions, donkeys, cows, sheep… With the addition, of course, of the inevitable dragon. Starting from Orlando himself whose mother Berta (sister of Charlemagne, fleeing the spells of Giliana, the daughter of the magician Merlin who had fallen in love with Milone who was Berta’s husband) met a shepherd in the woods who welcomed her like a daughter in her refuge (“I live in a cave and have no family”) where the defenseless “on a full moon night gave birth to a boy”. The future hero paladin in Song of Roland died in 778 at the battle of Roncesvalles.
A big novel narrated over the centuries also with the Pupi and welcomed, Mimmo explains, by popular devotion as when the little Angel appeared to say: «Ruggiero, Ruggiero, you are dead by God’s will, I smile on your pale face, the soul yours we will take up there in the heavenly paradise”. To which whoever filled the theater took off his coppola and made the sign of the cross: «The people knew they were puppets, but they didn’t laugh in front of a religious story, because in the face of death there must be mercy. At the Opera dei Pupi they don’t tell fairy tales, but the great epic of man».
December 23, 2022 (change December 23, 2022 | 20:40)
© Time.News