After performing a traditional guarattelle show, the puppeteer and his Pulcinella think they won’t have anything to eat as the audience left without paying. They both decide to leave Naples for France. When they arrive at court, the King carefully examines Pulcinella with a magnifying glass, and finds him too poor, so drives him away. Pulcinella beats the King with a stick and the guards come to arrest him. The puppet escapes from the puppet booth with the Puppeteer, who explains that if the puppet wants to eat, he must “change his face”.
The Puppeteer then turns Pulcinella into Polichinelle, giving him new, luxurious clothes decorated with ribbons and little bells, two bumps (one on the belly and the other on the back) and a white mask to hide his black half-mask. Thus transformed, Pulcinella moves and speaks far more slowly, but his new lazzi with a cock amuse the King greatly. The puppet and the Puppeteer are able to eat a big plate of pasta in front of the puppet booth and go to sleep with a full belly. Woken by the Marseillaise, they enter the puppet booth, believing a party is going on. On stage, in front of a guillotine, Robespierre and Danton debate whether the King should be tried. After cutting off the heads of Danton and the King, Robespierre also wants to kill Polichinelle, who is friends with the King. First, he cuts off one bump, and then the other, and finally the white mask. Polichinelle, who has now gone back to being “Pulcinella the revolutionary”, cuts off Robespierre’s head and then, like Napoleon Bonparte, proclaims himself emperor and uses a stick to beat, one after the other, the emperor of Austria and the Pope who has come to crown him. He shows his emperor’s crown to the Puppeteer: it means he’ll be able to eat for 200 years. The Puppeteer comes out of the booth for a last monologue at the end of which he dons the black half-mask and proclaims himself to be Pulcinella.

Glove-puppet

Actor and puppet

All audiences

Leone Bruno

Italy

Naples

Printed

Hunger

Quest

Poverty

Wealth

Revolution

Marseillaise

Plurilingualism

Capital executions and executors

French Revolution

Guillotine

People and history

Emperor

Comical

Farcical

French

Puppeteer

Pulcinella

Louis XVI

King

Minister

Guard

Polichinelle

Danton

Maximilien de Robespierre

François I d'Autriche

Pie VII

Dialog between a puppet and its puppeteer

Dialect as a social marker

Blow-with-a-stick

Word warping

Building a puppet on sight

Disguised character (false identity)

Monologue

Beheading

Swazzle

National language as a social marker

Destruction of a puppet

Pulcinella et la Révolution française

Pulcinella sings songs from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The intrigued Teresina would like to see this show, but Pulcinella deters her by saying that it is not appropriate for women. Then the two puppets disappear, and the Puppeteer comes out of his booth to announce the staging of a new show and the destruction of his old theatre. He goes back inside the booth. The guarattelle puppets sing the story of a traditional show: the Dog, a Guappo (a gangster) and Death assault Pulcinella, who drives them away so that he can finally marry his fiancée Teresina. Don Giovanni comes on and invites Pulcinella to his marriage with Teresina. Pulcinella asks the Puppeteer for help, but he refuses to get rid of Don Giovanni; instead, he encourages Pulcinella to find another fiancée. Don Giovani sings and dances with several women whom he seduces – a butterfly, a fan, a feather duster and a mouse. Then the women come back crying because Don Giovanni has abandoned them. Then Don Giovanni seduces Teresina. All the characters played by guarattelle arrive to invite Pulcinella to Teresina and Don Giovanni’s marriage. Pulcinella is overcome with sadness and asks every one of them to kill him. The Dog takes his hat off, the Guappo strikes him with a cane, Death removes his black mask and, at the end, the Puppeteer finds the lifeless puppet. But he rejoices, because he will soon serve Don Giovanni and become rich. The Puppeteer waits on the booth’s stage for the feast for Don Giovanni and Teresina’s marriage to be served. But he will only have an olive and a drop a wine. He announces the end of the show, when Pulcinella comes back. Because Don Giovanni will not repent, Pulcinella kills him by removing his head and his clothes and hitting the puppeteer’s hand. As a result, he reunites with Teresina, who tells him that Don Giovanni is impotent. They both dance a last tarentella. At the end, a giant puppet of Pulcinella comes on.