Usually a mixed genre containing both music and spoken dialogue, performed on a specially designed stage by puppets (string, hand or rod). The works may take the form of serious or comic operas, plays with incidental music or interpolated songs, or ballets. Because of the caricature nature of puppets, most works written for them have been comic adaptations, mock-heroic dramas or satires of popular dramas. Before the 5th century bce, puppets had a widespread existence in all civilized lands, and they continued to have a place in performances of mystery plays and liturgical dramas as well as the commedia dell’arte throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
The earliest known Italian operas for puppets (fantoccini) were 17th-century burlesques staged in Venice at the Teatro S Moisè by the Florentine nobleman Filippo Acciaiuoli (1637–1700). Leandro (1679), Damira placata (1680), Ulisse in Feaccia (1681) and Girello (1682) were staged during the Carnival season using wooden or wax figures while the music was performed by singers behind the stage.
In France a serious attempt to establish a permanent puppet (marionnette) theatre was made in 1676 by Dominique Normandin, Sieur de La Grille, one of Lully’s singers in the Académie Royale de Musique, who obtained royal permission to set up a troupe and a Théâtre des Pygmées in the Marais area of Paris. La Grille’s finely crafted marionettes were capable of dancing and of miming singing; it had been his intention eventually to present operas, and the livrets of the first two productions at the Théâtre des Pygmées reveal the use of singers and instrumentalists in Lullian parodies. The popularity of these works, together with La Grille’s evident ambition, led Lully to initiate a campaign of harassment against La Grille, who was forced to change the name of the troupe and to discontinue the employment of musicians. As a result the theatre closed in 1677.
During the 18th century the development of the ParisianThéâtres de la Foire and their continual struggle for survival contributed to the establishment of the marionette theatre. The Théâtres de la Foire were constantly harassed by the licensed Comédie-Française and the Académie Royale de Musique, and the puppet theatres, considered beneath official contempt, became a haven for persecuted or aspiring directors, actors, authors and musicians. This incessant rivalry stimulated a renewed interest in dramatic parody. The enlivening of these burlesques and operatic travesties byVaudeville played a part in the birth of the opéra comique. Without the marionette theatres at the annual fairs of St Germain and St Laurent, the production of parodies and opéras comiques would have been limited to the short periods of tenure of the human theatres. About 40 puppet opéras comiques have survived. Several of them, by such authors as Carolet, Favart, Fuzelier, d’Orneval, Le Sage, Piron and d’Orville, found their way into the series of publications entitled Le Théâtre de la Foire, ou l’Opéra-Comique (Paris, 1721–37). The importance of the marionette theatres, however, stood in direct proportion to their necessity; with the establishment of the Opéra-Comique and the Théâtre-Italien, and the replacement of the vaudeville by the ariette, they were quickly abandoned.
Puppet theatres have played a small but significant role in the history of the English stage. For a short time, when the Puritans closed the orthodox theatres during the interregnum, this form of popular entertainment provided the only home for dramatic activities. Descriptions of the puppet theatres at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs are noted in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. It was in these humble surroundings that the notable Punch made his début and became synonymous with English puppetry. By the end of the 17th century, puppets had been immortalized in numerous literary works including D’Urfey’s Don Quixote, Jonson’s Bartholomew Fayre and Addison’s Latin poem Machinae gesticulantes.
In the 18th century, operas, satires and artificial heroics filled the puppet theatres, now referred to as ‘Punch’s theatre’. Martin Powell (fl 1709–29) opened a well-fitted one in London in 1710; The Tatler and The Spectator regarded Powell’s theatre in Covent Garden and the opera at the Haymarket as the two leading diversions in London. For three seasons, Powell responded to the craze for Italian opera by staging satires of contemporary society, opera burlesques and mock-heroic tragedies. Following his success, Punch theatres opened yearly in unused concert halls or even in converted tennis courts. The Licensing Act of 1737 restricted regular theatrical activities, and many actors, musicians and playwrights sought refuge in the less conspicuous puppet theatres. Ballad operas now made up the bulk of the puppet theatres’ repertory, and contributions were made by such notable ‘proprietors’ as Charlotte Charke, Henry Fielding, Samuel Foote and Charles Dibdin.
Between 1770 and 1790 London was invaded by Italian fantoccino troupes, who mostly staged popular French comedies and light operas. Joseph Haydn visited one of these theatres, the Théâtre des Variétés Amusantes in Savile Row, in November 1791, and wrote in his diary: ‘The puppets were manipulated well; the singers were bad, but the orchestra was quite acceptable’. By this time, puppet theatres were as brilliantly fitted as Europe’s finest opera houses. It was at this level of existence that puppets found favour with the royal courts throughout Europe.
Puppets were displayed in their own elaborate theatre in plays and operettas at the summer palace of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy. The theatre flourished between 1773 and 1783 under Haydn’s musical guidance. At least two of Haydn’s own compositions were among the productions: Philemon und Baucis and Die Feuersbrunst. Other puppet works attributed to Haydn are: Hexenschabbas, Genove, Die bestrafte Rachbegierde and Demofoonte. Two more works were included in the puppet repertory: Alceste by Carlos d’Ordonez and Die Fee Urgele by Ignace Pleyel. In the closing years of the 18th century, the craze for puppets faded. The success enjoyed by the puppet theatre, usually at the expense of the human theatre, had now shifted to its living counterpart.
During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th there was an enthusiastic regeneration of interest in the puppet theatre, and in several countries puppetry reached an artistic level of significant potential. Illustrious names associated with the theatre, opera and stage design rediscovered in the puppet theatre an ideal medium for experimental work; many men of letters turned to it as a means of legitimate dramatic expression, including Edward Gordon Craig, G.B. Shaw, García Lorca, Anatole France and Alfred Jarry. Among operas composed specifically for marionette performance during this period are Hindemith’s Das Nusch-Nuschi (1921), Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro (1923), Satie’s Geneviève de Brabant (1926) and Ernst Toch’s Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse (1927); these were followed by Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy (1968). Other composers who added to the repertory include Britten, Casella, Caturla, Chausson, Copland, Honegger, Krenek, Liuzzi, Lualdi, Malipiero and Smetana. The early 20th century saw the establishment of a number of permanent puppet theatres, including two in Munich and others at Baden-Baden, Salzburg, Milan, Paris, Moscow and Chicago.
See also China, §IV, 4(i)(c); Japan, §VI, 2; and South-east Asia, §6.
F.W. Lindsay: Dramatic Parody by Marionettes in Eighteenth Century Paris (New York, 1946)
G. Speaight: The History of the English Puppet Theatre (London, 1955, 2/1990)
H.C.R. Landon: ‘Haydn’s Marionette Operas and the Repertoire of the Marionette Theatre at Esterháza Castle’, Haydn Yearbook 1962, 111–99
J.M. Minniear: Marionette Opera: its History and Literature (diss., North Texas State U., 1971)
M. Ohana: ‘La marionette à l'opéra’, ReM, nos.351–2 (1982), 75 only
J. de La Gorce: ‘Un théâtre parisien en concurrence avec l'Académie royale de musique dirigée par Lully: l'Opéra des Bamboches’, Jean-Baptiste Lully: Saint Germain-en-Laye and Heidelberg 1987, 223–33
J.-L. Impe: Opéra baroque et marionnette: dix lustres de répertoire musical au siècle des lumières (Charleville-Mézières, 1994)
JOHN MOHR MINNIEAR