With the fortress of Montalbano destroyed and his weapons and family handed over to Charlemagne near the city of Tremogna, Rinaldo was exiled by the emperor, as usual instigated by the perfidious traitor Gano of Magonza. According to the History of the Paladins of France by Giusto Lodico, which in this part of its compilation re-elaborates the anonymous fifteenth-century poem in ottava rima entitled Trabisonda, Rinaldo in the East experiences a glorious rise to the imperial throne in the city on the Black Sea, conquering with valor, charm, wisdom, and clemency the trust of thirty-six Saracen sovereigns, who from bitter enemies will become loyal supporters and defenders.

In the evenings of Rinaldo the Emperor, the audience of the Opera dei Pupi shared the highest point of that aspiration to re-establish a more just world order and that mythical redemption from their own condition of subalternity that Antonino Buttitta and Antonio Pasqualino have perceptively identified in their studies as profound reasons for the importance and success of the Paladin stories for the Sicilian popular classes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before the emergence of consumerism. Rinaldo, humiliated in the West and wrongly despised by Charlemagne and Gano and instead glorified in the East by many kings of different religions, became for the audience of the neighborhood theaters both the tangible proof that sometimes things in the world do turn out alright and a model of social mobility as they considered the pressing need to go and look for work outside Sicily as a real possibility of redemption from their precarious conditions.

For these reasons we wanted to develop a play that would re-enact this part of the cycle of the paladins. And we enjoyed working on the events and the characters of the Trabisonda (whose onomastic is already suggestive in itself) also because of a clear message of irenic and mutual tolerance between different religious faiths: after the initial conflicts, the Saracen rulers of the East accept a Christian emperor, while Rinaldo for his part recognizes their many merits, does not force them to convert to Christianity, leaves them freedom of worship, and does not destroy mosques.

These evenings, which we tried to condense into a single play, were important for the Opira audience for two other reasons as well. The human story of the necromancer Malagigi is concluded: after a memorable conflict between an angel and a devil for the possession of his soul, he dies as a saint. And then there are the first exploits of young heroes such as Guidone, son of Ruggiero and Bradamante, and Organtino del Diavolo, son of Malagigi: they appear here as supporting characters of the hero Rinaldo, but then they will become the protagonists of the History of Guido Santo, the continuation of the History of the Paladins of France which will cancel the mournful wound of the Roncesvalles massacre.

Here, too, there will be Peppininu, the mask of the Catanese puppet theater, engaged in the scene of the liberation of Rinaldo’s brothers from imprisonment, an example of how oral traditions and jokes have been deposited in the Sicilian Opera dei Pupi deriving, through popular theater, from the commedia dell’arte tradition.                  — Alessandro Napoli

The play was performed following an online mini-symposium on the theme of exile in the puppetry traditions of India, Japan, Iran, and Italy, likewise hosted by the Museo delle Marionette “Antonio Pasqualino.”

During the mini-symposium Alessandro Napoli (Marionettistica dei Fratelli Napoli, Catania) gave a presentation on the play’s literary, historical, and theatrical background, entitled “Dolori e trionfi di Rinaldo imperatore nel poema La Trabisonda.” (English translation of the abstract: “The anonymous poem La Trabisonda tells of Rinaldo’s exile in the East and his rise to the imperial throne of Trebizond. We will see the meanings that this chivalric story could convey in the second half of the fifteenth century and then among the Sicilian popular classes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who read the Storia dei paladini di Francia by Giusto Lodico and attended the performances of the Opera dei Pupi every evening.”)  The presentation, in Italian, can be found at 1:48:54 – 2:15:27 of the recorded mini-symposium.