The notebooks followed by an asterisk are privately owned, while all others listed below were donated to the Italian American Museum of New York.

The “Copioni” set

Copione 3 (originally Libro 1): Serate 1–14*1

Copione 4 (originally Libro 2): Serate 16–27*

Copione 5 (originally Paladini 2): Serate 25–45*

Copione 6 (originally Paladini 3): Serate 46–68

Copione 7 (originally Paladini 4): Serate 69–93*

Copione 8: Serate 92–107

Copione 9: Serate 108–128

Copione 10: Serate 129–146

Copione 11: Serate 147–164

Copione 12: Serate 165–180

Copione 13: Serate 181–195*

Copione 14 (originally Paladini 9): Serate 198–209

Copione 18 (originally Paladini 13): Serate 245–253

Copione 19 (originally Paladini 14): Serate 254–265

Copione 21: Serate 281–292

Copione 22: Serate 293–304

Copione 23: Serate 319–330

Notebooks and plays missing from this set: 15–17 (serate 210–244); 20 (serate 266–280), and serate 305–318 between Copioni 22 and 23.

The “Libri” set

Libro 1: Serate 1–15*

Libro 1: Serate 1–14 (repurposed as Copione 3)*

Libro 2: Serate 16–27 (repurposed as Copione 4)*

Libro 5: Serate 49–63*

Libro 6: Serate 64–79*

Libro 7: Serate 80–91

The rest of the set is missing.

The “Paladini” set

Paladini 1: Serate 1–24*4

Paladini 2 (repurposed as Copione 5): Serate 25–45*

Paladini 3 (repurposed as Copione 6): Serate 46–68

Paladini 4 (repurposed as Copione 7): Serate 69–93*

Paladini 6: Serate 120–142*

Paladini 7: Serate 143–172*

Paladini 8: Serate 173–195*

Paladini 9 (repurposed as Copione 14): Serate 198–209

Paladini 13 (repurposed as Copione 18): Serate 245–253

Paladini 14 (repurposed as Copione 19): Serate 254–265

The rest of the set is missing.

Additional Notebooks Containing Select Episodes from the Paladins of France Cycle

La morte dei Paladini nella Roncisvalle: Serate 326–328

Untitled notebook (missing a cover) with ten plays based on the Storia dei paladini's adaptation of the Orlando Furioso: Serate 1–10*

Introduction

Although Ariosto relays Orlando's loss of sanity in painstaking psychological detail, he later reveals that the paladin's affliction is nothing less than divine retribution. After Orlando has spent three months wandering aimlessly and wreaking havoc wherever he goes, the period of punishment is over and God enlists Astolfo to restore his cousin's sanity. The English knight had already been a world traveler in the Innamorato, departing from Paris (discussed in Chapter 4) and reaching Cathay on horseback, then continuing on a circuitous route to the most disparate corners of the globe. In the Furioso, he travels not only by land and sea, but also by air, first upon a hippogriff that takes him to Africa, the entrance of hell, and the terrestrial paradise, and subsequently in a divine chariot that transports him to the moon where he will retrieve Orlando's wits.

Astolfo's aerial adventures constitute the core of sera 203. He appears in Act 1 descending from the sky on the hippogriff as he arrives in Nubia (Ethiopia), and he finds himself on the lunar surface by the final scene of Act 3. His divinely orchestrated mission to retrieve Orlando's wits, however, is not the exclusive focus of the play. His adventures are interwoven with additional narrative threads that revolve around the theme of the quest: (1) Bradamante finally decides to leave her family home in Montalbano to seek out Ruggiero; (2) the knights Sansonetto and Oliviero are intent on searching for Orlando; and (3) Rinaldo, although not mentioned in the summary, appears in one scene aiming to recover his horse Baiardo from Gradasso. Whereas Astolfo, following God's design, will succeed in restoring Orlando's sanity without having knowingly set out to do so, his peers are not as fortunate: Bradamante's reunion with Ruggiero will be obstructed and delayed until much later; Orlando's two friends Sansonetto and Oliviero are challenged, defeated, and imprisoned by Rodomonte; and Rinaldo simply wanders in vain. The juxtaposition of these various storylines in the play creates a contrast between the utter efficacy of divine intervention and the inherent difficulties of human undertakings.

Alessandro Napoli

“The curtain rises on a medieval courtyard. Two knights in shining armor are conversing in flamboyant Italian.” These words open the chapter entitled “Orlando Furioso: The Flower of Chivalry,” included in the now classic Art of the Puppet by Bil Baird published in 1965 for Macmillan in New York and translated into Italian as Le marionette: Storia di uno spettacolo (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1966). Baird devotes this chapter to puppets that bring to life a chivalric repertory. To be more precise, however, the author focuses primarily on Catanese-style Opera dei Pupi as he came to know it in the New York theater of Agrippino Manteo and his family.

Baird's chapter—which I read while a university student writing my thesis, La Marionettistica dei fratelli Napoli: permanenze e mutamenti nell’Opera dei Pupi di tradizione catanese—marked my first encounter with the name and history of this Catanese puppeteer who immigrated to America. From that moment, there arose a long series of questions, many of which today are answered by the study that I have the honor and joy of presenting in this foreword. Baird's chapter title is placed at the bottom right of a double-page photograph featuring four puppets of the Manteo family: a Saracen, Ruggiero dell’Aquila Bianca, Bradamante, and Rinaldo. From a structural point of view, these puppets belong unequivocally to the Catanese tradition: most notably, they have rigid legs without knee joints as well as a fixed right-hand fist holding a sword, and they are meant to be manipulated by handlers (manianti) standing on a bridge (‘u scannappoggiu) raised with respect to the puppet theater stage and hidden by the backdrop. Yet some details in the shape of the puppets’ armor are very different from the typical Catanese shape codified by the great coppersmith masters Giuseppe don Puddu Maglia and Sebastiano don Bastianu Zappalà. The helmets without neck guards and the oval shields of Bradamante and Rinaldo with the lion insignia over an oblique bar, moreover, make those puppets look very much like the traditional puppets of Palermo. In short, Baird's chapter and the photographs published in it ignited in me a profound curiosity about Papa Agrippino Manteo and his puppets.

Donated to the Italian American Museum of New York

Leggio, Giuseppe. Il figlio di Ricciardetto, ovvero Guido Santo e i discendenti di Carlo Magno seguito alla rotta di Roncisvalle. Vol. 1. Palermo: Leggio, 1907.

———. Rinaldino ovvero l’Emulo di Guido Santo seguito a Dolores e Straniero Rinaldino. Vol. 2. Palermo: Leggio, n.d.

———. Trabazio. The cover is missing, but Storia di Trabazio imperatore di Costantinopoli e dei suoi valorosi figli Febo e Rosaclerio was published by Leggio in Palermo in 1912 (Napoli in Pasqualino, Rerum palatinorum fragmenta 500).

Malfa, Giuseppe. Uzeta il Catanese e Magilda di Catana. Palermo: Leggio, n.d.

Privately Owned

Bulfinch, Thomas. Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages. New edition with an explanatory introduction by Arthur Richmond Marsh. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1903.

Leggio, Giuseppe. Dolores e Straniero. The front matter is missing, but Dolores e Straniero ed Il prete rinnegato seguito al Guido Santo, was published by Leggio in Palermo in 1899, 1907, 1922, and without a date (Napoli in Pasqualino, Rerum palatinorum fragmenta 500).

———. Guido Santo. The front matter is missing, but Il figlio di Ricciardetto ovvero Guido Santo e i discendenti di Carlo Magno Seguito alla rotta di Roncisvalle was published by Leggio in Palermo in 1912, 1920, 1922, 1928, and without a date (Napoli in Pasqualino, Rerum palatinorum fragmenta 500).

———. Storia di Trabazio imperatore di Costantinopoli e dei suoi valorosi figli Febo e Rosaclerio. Parte prima. Palermo: Leggio, 1912.

Lo Dico, Giusto. Storia dei paladini di Francia. Naples: Bideri, 1909. Giuseppe Leggio's expanded version bound together in three volumes.

Introduction

Although Roland/Orlando had an extensive literary history as the character passed from medieval France to Renaissance Italy, Agricane di Tartaria is, like Angelica and Gradasso, an invention of Boiardo. The great khan is imagined as another powerful ruler who covets a prize he cannot attain. Like those gathered in Paris for the opening joust, moreover, he too has fallen under the spell of the princess of Cathay:

Agricane's words and actions on the battlefield offer a complex portrait despite his single-minded focus. Unlike the would-be Arthurian lover Orlando who intends to “win” Angelica through valiant deeds on her behalf, Agricane is unrelenting in his goal to gain possession of the princess through military force. Nevertheless, he abides by an international code of chivalry that places honorable behavior above victory at all costs. Accordingly, he not only dismounts from his horse in order to fight an opponent without an unfair advantage (OI 1.11.22–23) but he also refuses to conquer through treachery when offered the opportunity (OI 1.14.55).

Agricane's battle against Orlando near the fortress of Albraca is not only one of the Innamorato episodes most commonly included in Italian literature anthologies, but it also continues to be prominent in contemporary Sicilian puppet theater.3 The episode stands out not so much for the martial combat, but rather because of the philosophical dialogue between the two opponents as they lie down next to each other under a starry night sky. In Agrippino's play, the battle between Agricane and Orlando extends across all three Acts and their famous conversation occupies most of Act 3.

Sera 165 also interweaves the exploits of another Eastern character invented by Boiardo—the indomitable female warrior Marfisa. In the Orlando Innamorato, she is both a queen and the greatest warrior in “all the East” who arrives in Albraca as an ally of Angelica's father Galafrone against Agricane (OI 1.16.28). She is not originally associated with any specific region, but in Niccolò degli Agostini's continuation of the poem (and subsequently in the Orlando Furioso, the Storia dei paladini, and Sicilian puppet theater) she is the twin sister of Ruggiero, an exemplary knight of mixed heritage designated by Boiardo to become the cofounder of the family dynasty of his patron, Ercole I d’Este (discussed in Chapter 7).

Introduction

When Boiardo opens his Orlando Innamorato with the shocking news that King Carlo's most dutiful paladin accomplished “stupendous feats” and “amazing labours” while under the influence of love, he warns readers not to be surprised to hear about Orlando in love since “no strong arm, no audacity, / no blade well-honed, no shield or mail, / no other power can avail, / for in the end Love conquers all” (OI 1.1.1–2). Orlando's infatuation leads him to forsake his duty not only to the emperor, but also to his wife Alda (his fiancée Aude in the French tradition) and to Christendom as a whole in a vain attempt to win over the wily princess of Cathay.

Yet an even more extreme fate befalls the paladin in the Orlando Furioso. In picking up the narrative threads of the poem that Boiardo left unfinished at his death in 1494, Ariosto famously announces his intention to tell something never before related in prose or verse: the hero's descent into madness because of love (OF 1.2). And the poet indeed makes good on his promise about midway through the poem. Upon learning about Angelica's love affair with the North African footsoldier Medoro, Orlando literally goes insane with jealousy. In losing his rational faculties, he also leaves behind his identity as a Frankish paladin and his very humanity in the process (OF 23.100–36).

One might expect that the play staging Orlando's madness, one of the most iconic episodes in both Italian literary history and Sicilian puppet theater, would take up most of the evening's action. In sera 198, however, Orlando's loss of his sanity is concentrated in the four scenes that conclude the play (Act 2, scene 6, and the three scenes of Act 3). Agrippino prepares for this climactic moment by interweaving the vicissitudes of other enamored characters: (1) Bradamante longing for her beloved Ruggiero; (2) Rinaldo seeking to challenge Orlando over Angelica; (3) the star-crossed lovers Isabella and Zerbino reuniting; and (4) Rodomonte pursuing Mandricardo for having abducted his beloved Doralice.

The Storia dei paladini di Francia, as noted earlier, combines several Renaissance chivalric works into a single continuous narrative of interlacing episodes. Lodico wove together stories in chronological order, supplied additional background and explanatory details to fill in narrative gaps and smooth out contradictions among the source texts, and sometimes related new adventures to further develop the plot. Despite the resulting sense of both cohesiveness and comprehensiveness, the many source texts incorporated into this massive prose compilation were written in different geopolitical environments and convey distinct ideological perspectives. Thus, the worldview of any particular episode inevitably takes its starting point from the source text.

The eight plays presented in Part Two—from the appearance of Angelica of Cathay in Paris to the final battle of three against three on the island of Lampedusa—are drawn from the central portion of the Storia dei paladini which follows the plot of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. These two source texts have a prominent place in the cycle as a whole. As Carocci has pointed out, the entire repertory of the Storia dei paladini is constructed around the nucleus of the “‘beautiful story’ of Orlando in love and then furious” (Il poema che cammina 51). What is announced by Boiardo as an embarrassing parenthesis in Orlando's heroic trajectory—that is, the paladin's enamorment of Angelica of Cathay and subsequent disregard of his duty to king and patria—becomes in Lodico's hands “the pivotal point around which the rest of the narrative revolves: the heart and nerve center of the story” (51). In the process, “whereas many other poems are shattered, dismembered and modified, the Boiardo-Ariosto core is faithfully reproduced in its entirety and right down to the details, following the particular narrative arrangement of spacetime of the authors without modifications, displacements, or cuts” (51).

Boiardo's late fifteenth-century Orlando Innamorato created a literary sensation by purportedly exposing a scandalous history: the hitherto stalwart Frankish paladin actually deserted both the emperor Carlo and his own wife Alda to traverse the globe as a would-be Arthurian knight errant seeking to win the affection of the beautiful princess of Cathay.

Sources of the Paladins of France Cycle

Giusto Lodico's Storia dei paladini (1858–1860) weaves together in chronological fashion episodes from both canonical and lesser-known fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury poems to arrive at almost 3,000 pages of prose. This monumental compilation quickly became the undisputed source of Sicilian puppet theater and was commonly referred to as the puppeteers’ Bible or simply “the book.” Following the publication of Giuseppe Leggio's expanded edition in 1895–1896, puppeteers increasingly adopted this more extensive and readily available version even while invariably citing Lodico as the sole author. Leggio's version, printed frequently in the following decades, also became the basis of all successive editions. A perusal of Agrippino's scripts confirms that he likewise drew from Leggio's expanded version rather than Lodico's original narrative. Indeed, a copy of the 1909 edition published by Bideri in Naples is still in the family's possession today (Appendix 3).

Anyone interested in reading the prose source of the stories staged in Agrippino's Paladins of France cycle can find Leggio's expanded version of the Storia dei paladini most recently published in 13 volumes between 1993 and 2000. For those who do not read Italian, there are excellent English translations of the most famous Renaissance poems refashioned by Lodico, namely Torquato Tasso's Rinaldo (1562), Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (ca. 1483, 1495), Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532) and Cinque canti (published posthumously in 1545), and Luigi Pulci's Morgante (ca. 1478, 1483). These five poems take the reader from Rinaldo's initiation into knighthood (Tasso) to his departure from the Frankish court following his heroic exploits at Roncevaux (Pulci), and include the central episodes of Orlando's enamorment of the princess Angelica (Boiardo), descent into madness, and miraculous recovery (Ariosto).

Using the Storia dei paladini as his direct source, Agrippino painstakingly transformed the third-person prose adaptation into intricate scripts. Each play consists of three acts, with each act generally divided into various scenes with detailed stage instructions. Substantial dialogues (and monologues) are written out in full while the less notable exchanges would have been improvised during the performance. In the absence of an audio or video recording of the Paladins of France cycle, these scripts provide the only indication we have of the speech and action that occurred in each evening's play.

Introduction

Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato begins with two East Asian rulers threatening Carlo's Frankish realm. The first to be announced—although his arrival is long postponed—is King Gradasso who ventures all the way from Sericana (southeast Asia) to France in order to acquire Orlando's sword Durlindana and Ranaldo's horse Baiardo. This impetuous acquisitive desire prompts the author's opening reflection on very powerful rulers who crave what they do not possess: “The greater obstacles there are / to reaching what they would obtain / the more they jeopardize their realms, / and what they want, they cannot gain” (OI 1.1.5). The second ruler, King Galafrone, has sent his daughter Angelica and son Argalia from Cathay (China) to France to challenge all the knights present at Carlo's international tournament to undertake a new joust with the princess herself as the prize. Since Argalia possesses an enchanted lance that knocks his opponent from the saddle at the slightest touch, the proposed contest is simply a ruse to lead the unwary knights, both Christian and Saracen, back to Cathay as prisoners. Although Galafrone's scheme will not go as planned, Angelica's presence in Paris and sudden departure nonetheless have the effect of shifting the conceptual frame of the poem from Carolingian epic to Arthurian romance in its opening canto.

The contemporary Sicilian puppeteer Mimmo Cuticchio asserts that “the Arrival of Angelica is one of the traditional public's most loved episodes because the most beautiful stories, interlaced with love, duels, and enchantments, begin from this point” (50). The episode is also one of the most iconic moments in Italian literary history. It was subject to creative imitation in subsequent fiction, such as the entrance of Armida in Torquato Tasso's epic Gerusalemme Liberata and, extending into the novel, that of characters named Angelica in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard and, beyond the Italian tradition, Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. The episode remains one of the most frequently staged plays in Sicilian puppet theater today. As we shall see below, Agrippino endeavored to make his theatrical version particularly memorable. After interweaving Gradasso's exploits and the interactions between the Christian Franks and Saracen Spaniards in Acts 1 and 2, the puppeteer devotes all of Act 3 to elaborating the arrival of Angelica in ways that go well beyond the Storia dei paladini's prose adaptation.

This appendix contains 269 translated synopses from the Copioni set (including notebooks repurposed from the Libri and Paladini sets) and two synopses of plays that are extant in the Libri set but not in the Copioni set. Where applicable, I have noted in parentheses additional extant versions in Agrippino's handwriting in the other two sets in order to facilitate a firsthand comparison across plays. A study of the variants would no doubt yield new insights into Agrippino's process of rewriting and revision from one set of scripts to the next.

In addition to the synopses, I have included the sparse comments in Agrippino's handwriting discussed in Chapter 2. I have also standardized the punctuation for greater ease of comprehension. Not included are revisions to the script (unless noted), temporal indications, or comments in handwriting other than Agrippino’s. My explanations are in brackets.

Libro 1 (equivalent of Copione 3): Serate 1–15 (139 pages) Sera 1°

Bernardo di Chiaramonte, Girardo di Frata, Morando di Riviera, and Raimondo advise Pipino to take a wife in order to produce an heir. The four barons arrive in Buda and marry Pipino to Berta del gran piè [of the big foot], they return to Paris. The conspiracy of Lisetta, with the help of Grifone, Spinaldo, and Tolomeo. Berta, abducted by four assassins, is tied up in the forest and then freed by Lamberto.

Sera 2°

Berta, who has set up a pavilion, sends Lamberto to sell it. Grifone di Magonza buys it and initiates a search for Berta. King Filippo goes to Paris to find Berta. The queen recognizes Lisetta. Pipino goes hunting with Filippo and the barons, gets separated from his companions, and happens to arrive at Lamberto's home. Berta and Pipino recognize each other. The barons go in search of Pipino.

Serata 3°

Filippo and his barons arrive at Lamberto's dwelling. Filippo recognizes Berta. Pipino returns to Paris and attacks the Magonzesi. A great battle in the squares of Paris. The Magonzesi flee. Lisetta is burned alive. The barons go to retrieve Berta. Grifone prepares an ambush and a great battle follows. The agency of Berta, death of Spinaldo and Tolomeo, escape of Grifone, and birth of Gano.

Papa Manteo’s Marionettes—Currently at IAM

Introduction

In Book One of the Orlando Innamorato, King Galafone of Cathay sent his daughter Angelica to Paris in a scheme to capture the international array of knights gathered at Carlo's court, King Gradasso of Sericana crossed the globe in order to attain a famous horse and sword, and King Agricane of Tartaria waged a large-scale war back in Cathay to possess none other than Angelica. As we have seen in the previous chapters, all three undertakings ended in failure. At the opening canto of Book Two, King Agramante of Biserta (Bizerte, in today's Tunisia) has a more grandiose and openly territorial goal: the conquest of Carlo's entire Frankish realm. Yet no earthly kingdom can contain his ambition since he boasts that after subjugating France he intends to assault the heavens themselves (OI 2.1.64). His ally Rodamonte, king of Sarza (Chercel, in today's Algeria), aims to surpass him in his vertical extension, declaring that he is ready to follow—or lead—Agramante equally into the heavens or the inferno (OI 2.1.65). Agramante's most trusted advisors, however, are against such a foolhardy undertaking, thus setting the stage for a heated debate at the pan-African council held in Biserta.

As this impending threat to Carlo's realm arises from the south, newsworthy occurrences continue in various other regions of the globe. Agricane's son Mandricardo leaves Tartaria to invade Circassia (Caucasia), where he will wreak havoc in the region in the absence of its ruler Sacripante who is off fighting in Cathay on behalf of Angelica. The war in Albraca, in fact, rages on despite Agricane's death as though it had taken on a life of its own. Orlando is absent, however, because Angelica has sent him to the fairy Falerina's enchanted garden in Orgagna in order to prevent him from killing the recently arrived Ranaldo. Along the way, Orlando meets an even more deceitful damsel, named Origille, who beguiles him. If earlier Orlando's subjection to Dragontina was the result of a magic beverage, the paladin has no such excuse when he is smitten with the perfidious but fully human Origille and (temporarily, at least) forgets all about Angelica.