The Opera dei Pupi is a Sicilian puppet theatre. The Sicilian Pupi (puppets), as we see them today, originated in the 19th century. The characters are recognizable by the expressiveness of their faces, the shape of their copper or brass armor, and the emblem they wear on their armor and shield. Each character has a distinguishing color in both the ‘faroncina’ (a type of skirt worn by the puppets of Palermo and Catania) and the plume.
The genre they narrate is chivalric, covering tales from the Kings of France to “Orlando Innamorato”, “Orlando Furioso”, the wars against the Moors of Spain, and the Battle of Roncesvalles.
The subjects staged within the puppet theatre fully meet popular expectations by allowing the audience to redeem their subordination through projection and identification with heroes who resolve through myth the contradictions typical of stratified societies, where working classes must overcome a daily grind at constant risk of survival.
Courage, loyalty, and friendship are elements best realized in the chivalric epics of the puppet opera. The audience gains an awareness of sharing important knowledge that becomes a behavioral paradigm used to classify facts and people.
The puppet opera takes its models from “the dance with swords” and the “cunto” of the storyteller, from which it draws its themes. The rhythmic movement of the dance with swords evokes the battles found in the “Epic Maggi”, where chivalrous themes activate the eternal conflict between good and evil, friend and foe.
There has been talk of the pupi opera’s descent from the Syracusan puppeteers who practiced the craft in Syracuse during Socrates’ time. Of course, the puppets were different from what they are today. The armed characters, as they have come down to us, date back to the early nineteenth century, and the primacy of this innovation, as far as Western Sicily is concerned, is disputed between Don Gaetano Greco and Don Liberto Canino.
Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, four different types of acting, maneuvering, fighting, and staging associated with the Greco, Canino, Pernice, and Giarratano families can be distinguished in the Teatrini dell’Opera dei Pupi. The history of the Cuticchio family is linked to that of Don Gaetano Greco, who was active in Palermo from 1813 to 1874.
Giacomo Cuticchio was born in Palermo on March 6, 1917. As a child, he attended the theater of Don Achille Greco and his sons, Ermenegildo and Alessandro.
In 1933, he opened his first puppet theater in Palermo on Via Aloisio Juvara and became a traveling puppeteer starting in 1943. He moved through the provinces of Palermo, Enna, Caltanissetta, Agrigento, and Trapani, where he performed the cycle of the History of the Paladins of France and other special evenings dedicated to saints, brigands, and Shakespearean dramas. During these travels with his wife, Pina Patti, seven children were born who would later collaborate in daily theater life.
In 1969, Giacomo Cuticchio returned to Palermo and started his last theater, which he named “Ippogrifo”. He operated this theater until his death on October 16, 1985.
