Puppet Opera: La Liberazione di Ruggiero

"There certainly was a tradition of performing opera with puppets," Warren said, "going back to the beginning of opera. Unlike previous productions we have done with the Carters, this opera was never done with puppets. This opera was performed only once for a specific occasion in 1625, and not performed again until the 20th century." It is not a US premiere, however. "We have done plenty of modern premiere of 17th century music," Warren acknowledged, "but in this case it has been done. This opera received a lot of attention since it is the first opera by a woman. So there has been musicological work on it and several productions in the last couple decades."

Actually, apart from Kaija Saariaho and the upcoming commission of the SF Opera from Jennifer Higdon we could not come up with another opera written by a female composer. "We should advertise this as the only opera by a woman," joked Warren.

The opera also has political implications. "What happened," Warren explained, "is that the Medici men seemed to be all quite sick. They tended to die young, including Cosimo the second. His son, the heir, was eleven or twelve at the time, and Cosimo was very concerned that some other possible male heir would usurp power from his son. So in his will, he decided his widow, Maria Magdalena, would serve as a regent until Fernando II was eighteen. Once she became the official ruler, all the commissions she had were affirming and validating strong women and women being in charge: Judith from the Biblical story, St Agatha, all these heroic Saints, there were all these strong women. It was a very important political agenda to her. The frescoes in her palace outside of Florence depicted strong women from the mythology or from the Scriptures."

"In this opera, which was a prologue to the main event of a day, which was a horse ballet, she chose the subject, she supervised the libretto, she attended the rehearsal, she also advised on which singer would sing which role. She was also involved in the horse ballet, she paid more money for horses than she had for singers," Warren laughed.

Scott Whitaker (left) sings Ruggiero (right).

So the agents of the action are these two strong women, one who is depicted as a positive character, a good witch if you will, Melissa and Alcina, as a bad witch. You can interpret it as sensuality, or pleasure, versus duty. And duty wins in this case.

We asked puppeteer Stephen Carter how he could stage sensuality with his marionettes. "If you want a sensual love scene with puppets, it tends to be ridiculous," he laughed. "In the stylized way in which baroque love is presented, in a rather formal way, these puppets do it quite well. It fits the subject matter. To stage an intimate love scene with puppets caressing and kissing, it tends to be ridiculous. It's part of the charm."

"The interesting thing is," Warren continued, "in order to convince and liberate Ruggiero, Melissa turns herself into a male authority figure, Atlante, who was the mentor, not really the father but the adopted father, step-father, mentor figure for Ruggiero. So Melissa appears as a male authority figure, you can imagine the subtext for that. And she convinces him to put his suit of armor on and go back to the battle.

Then she has monsters come out, there is a big sword fight, and fire breathing dragons and hyppogriffs."

How to set in action the fights and dragons and characters is incumbent on Stephen and his crew: his wife Chris and his thirty-two year old son Dimitri for this show. We asked him how the Sicilian marionette style of the 17th century compares with that of the puppets in the movie Being John Malkovich. Stephen explained: "Being John Malkovich, those are a modern form of marionette, which is fully strung, with a wooden crossbar with a minimum of nine strings suspended on. It's typical of the modern marionette. It's from the late 19th century and into the 20th century, it's not that old a form. If you go back to the 18th century, the figure is the same, it's a complete doll fully jointed, which mimics the human body. But as you go back in history, they use fewer strings and they often use wires or sometimes metal rods. The Sicilian form is an antique form of marionette, which is just suspended by an iron rod. In it's primitive form, that's all there is. The Sicilian puppet, they are pretty large and pretty heavy, and they are all decked out in metal. The Sicilian are very good metal smiths. We have three figures that we commissioned from a Sicilian maker, because the armors are just fabulous and we can't begin to reproduce that.

For those who think puppeteering is kid's play, Stephen warned: "It is physical, it gets hot in there. We come out to the curtain call streaming in sweat. The Sicilian puppets are heavy. They're about 3 feet tall, a fully armored knight can weigh up to forty pounds, some of them weigh even more. They're all clad in real metal. And they go at each other during the fight scenes. The puppet supports some of the weight on their legs, but you have to carry them mostly, it's quite fatiguing. I have a chipped tooth which I incurred during puppet combat! We were using the metal control rods, and the person I was working with raised her arm straight into my tooth."

We asked if children were the targeted audience, because, you know, puppets. "I tend to be evasive in answering this," punted Stephen. "There should be no distinction between the adult and the child. When you get to the core of the matter, most adults can retain some child-like delight. That's what make these opera presentations so special. The puppet has a kind of naivety. They are not human, they're more awkward in some ways. It's a stylized performance. It brings everybody back to the sense of imagination they had as children. Children have a tremendous capacity to relate to adult themes of love, sex and honor, and all of the rest," he laughed. "Unfortunately that is the content of human culture. This is not intended as a children performance. In the same sense you'll take a child to a classical concert, and they can sit down and concentrate, they'll do fine. But it will be much more lively than a classical concert, there will be lot more thrills.

The program opens tonight at 8:00 pm at the First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, and repeats tomorrow at 8:00 pm at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley and Sunday at 4pm at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.