“Not to-day,” I replied gently.
So we ate our dinner and discussed what we should do during the evening. He wanted to go to the marionette theatre, and I was not surprised, for I remembered that the
vergers of Westminster Abbey and of Salisbury Cathedral spend their holidays making tours to visit other cathedrals; cooks go to Food Exhibitions; Scotch station-masters come to London and spend their time in the Underground railways; and English journalists when they meet on an outing, say to one another:
“It is a foggy morning; let us go in and split three or four infinitives.”
So I took him to the Teatro Sicilia and introduced him to the proprietor, Gregorio Grasso, a half-brother of Giovanni Grasso, and we went behind the scenes to study the difference between the Catanian and the Palermitan systems. He was first struck by the immense size of the place as compared with his own little theatre; next by the orchestra which, instead of being a mechanical piano turned by a boy, consisted of a violin, a guitar and a double-bass played by men; and finally by the manner of manipulating the figures, which distressed him so seriously that he forgot he was a Portuguese gentleman and began to give Gregorio a lesson to show him how much better we do things in Palermo; but it came to nothing, because a method that produces a good effect when applied to a small and fairly light marionette will not do when applied to one that is nearly a metre and a half high and weighs about fifty kilogrammes; it is like trying to play an elaborate violin passage on the horn. Soon we were politely invited to go to the front, where we were shown into good places, and the performance began. In the auditorium there was the familiar, pleasant, faint crackling of melon seeds and peanuts which the people were munching as at home, and a man pushing his way about among them selling lemonade, and water with a dash of anise in it.
The buffo thought the marionettes of Catania were magnificent, well-modelled and sumptuously dressed; but their size and their weight make it impossible for them to move with the delicacy and naturalness which he and his father and brother know so well how to impart to those at
home. They may start fairly well, but sooner or later the figure will betray to the public the fatigue of the operator who is standing exhausted on the platform behind, no longer capable of communicating any semblance of life to the limbs of the puppet. He did not, however, arrive at this conclusion all at once, for, in the course of the performance when I asked him how it was that the marionettes of Catania were not more expressive, he replied:
“I suppose it must be on account of the lava.”
The figures appear against the back-cloth and the operator cannot reach forward to bring them nearer to the audience, thus the front part of the stage is free—or rather it would be free, but the public are permitted to stray on to it, and thus the stage presents a picture of marionettes with two or three live people sitting at each side.
“Buffo mio,” I said, “does it appear to you to be a good plan that the public should go on the stage and mingle with the paladins? It is not allowed in our own theatre at home.”