The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 24, 1902, Page 6

HE two theaters of the Itallan quarter are fascinating foreign fla- vored places, with wide contrasts in the programmes they offer thelr At the one, the Teatro the plays are essentially nchiness and froth; at the other, the ro delle Marionettes, inge of medievalism. For ackward from the farei- act entitled “Un Mo- “The Model of Wood,” adins of France,” the knight- followed Charlemagre audiences. Varieta of the day, bits ¢ they have it is a long cal comedy dello to the Iy © who mpions in battle. But the contrasts do not end here, for while the Teatro delle Varleta has its human stenterello or clown surrounded the Teatro delle by & comy Marionettes s its most telling effects by the wooden figures—cleverly meni the same that sant in Italy Enows so the count pes well out of the theater flares a imade poster telling in a few sentences of Italian the the coming night. doors of the v portiere lead- proper, and you are to all in- is long uches of scarlet in its speak across stor Go rough vesti Italy wide enough for a that runs on either Seats in this in price in the he last ones near occupied by a whole who divides between the ther, Americans, who n the wrong place, just : in the eyes of the im- jans. But take the cor- gallery and look away 1 ts engaged in the curtain, of expression does the are ail They there or perous wix crowd in of the stage, 1 the grimaces and the m in who t of the comedian. rest, too, the trem- wh imo trills as the elec- p and the curtain stage, all wings and e back is a drop rep- plays a series of resen a military camp of the knightly days stops, there is a thump- ing step as of a man with two wooden legs and y in the glory of It is Charle- His right arm, with which he lates freely, is guided by a metal which seems to come from some- From him seems to come smooth-fliowing Italian of the great rod. where a volce ths the st above tel battle for which he.is He seems human, and so the dience liter- other entrance and with much knights and gen- d gives the ally rega thum court erals me tes them, some go« of which it avaiis jteelf. T as it progresses, if you sk some the open-mouthed spec- sh, is #o- was given rteen months v a section of the of France” Is ges of three acts s are fascinating d wonders in the at each spectacles way of m In the se ac pears Lavinia, Princess of Pc vacant-looking lady in a avor tin dress. She gets aro : and confides to the corrid stle that she Is for some one. be the Prince of Spain, a yellow cloak. The mellow te her that he is despon rs the consequences of an elopement. Then Lavinia grows agi- tated, and in a sweet, childish voice tells ber troubles: It is a pathetic voice to come from so wooden a being as Lavinia, end you wish you could see the owner of the voice. The stage lights go down, the music thrills and thrills more strenu- ously, and each Italian countenance in the audience is the picture of rapt ex- pectancy as the Prince flings, with a violent gesture of his hand, his cloak over the veil of Lavinia and they make & fiying dash for the opposite side of the stage 16 leave the castle forever. There s & tremendous bang from somewhere, and a warrior in green satin with a fe- rocious looking drawn sword confronts them. It is the King of Hungary, the Prince’s rival, who prevents the elope- ment, and the curtain falls amid great excitement. For the next few seconds there are men strolling outward from the wedge-shaped little auditorium, munch- ing of peanuts and vivid smiles and flash- es of white teeth as the happenings of the previous acts are discussed. Then from one side of the gay curtain of the stage. steps forth a well-built man with a strong Italian face. He has on no coat, a canvas apron, and his sleeves are roll- ed above his elbows, showing arms that are well knit, like the rest of him. On one wrist is a wide band of leather, to which is attached an iron ring. If you are an observing person you wonder what that is for. : This man is Mariano Sire, who has bee! the proprietor of marionette companies in Italy and France and in New York for the past thirty years. The moment he opens his mouth you know that he is CHARLEMANGE ANC HNIS BRAVE KNIGHNTS . the ownmer of the rich volce capabie ©I the range of expression that makes the wooden characters of the play seem as if brought to life. And what makes this voice the more effective is the fact that he does not read, but knows from mem- ory the whole dialogue of fourteen plays. But at the moment that he stands by the curtain his voice is trained for business purposes. He tells in rapid gesture and sentences the story of the part of the play to be performed on the following night. It is like reading the synopsis in a serial story. y THE SUNDAY CALL A _rmrreelrars Ve avflous TWO THEATERS OF SAN FRANCISCO’S ITALIAN QUARTER It's' worth one's while to stand in with the genial doorkeeper, Antonio Barras, and be allowed to disappear through the foot-wide slit called by courtesy a deor, at the side of the stage; to emerge into a world of mimicry and marionettes. At first darkness seems to stretch beyond the last wing of the little stage, and through it loom ranks of tinseled figures. You observe, wonderingly, that whereas they appeared to you life size from the front, here they are in reality not more than three feet tall at the most.- The 1ron roas ana cords tnat gulde the move- ments of their hands are terminated by hooks that come together on an iron ring, whereby they hang from the rafters of the roof in ranks on the walls, and one lady, & queen in pink satin and gold, with a crown of brilllants, is swinging from a gas pipe. Then you go to the wings, and observe that the scenery is built on the same plan; and this very pro- portionate size with the distance from the audience creates the life-size effect. From one corner grins a devil, while opposite leers the black-clothed comedian that the audience positively loves. A line of gold that shines from the dusky back- ground is formed by the helmets of Charlemagne’s warriors. Bradamante, the warrior maiden; 'Marfissa, Rinaldo and a host of others are there, and a fe- rocious wooden steed is tethered in a corner. Now there are 250 in the company of the marionettes, about a hundred new fig- ures having just been purchased from the proprietor of the other theater, who once ran a marionette show for himself. Suddenly an Itallan voice utters sharply the word “Silencio!” The third and most bloody act of all has begun, and the best place to see and hear is to stand at the wings, where you can see both in front and back of the drop scene representing » rather damaged looking castle hall. About half way up the back of the scene runs a narrow shelf of wood. On this stand Mariano, his son John, a lad of 14 with a face and eyes tnat artists rave over, and Joe, a lad who assists in the heavy lifting and manipulating of the ma- rionettes. From this shelf they lean over the top of the scene each with two iron rods in their hands. These iron rods are attached one to the head of the marion- ette, the other to its wooden hand, and gulded by the strong arms and clever heads above the figures “move, live and have their being.” Another Joe is there, a small, lightheaded youngster, Wwho seems everywhere at once, for it is his duty to have the varlous figures taken from their hooks on the wall and ready to make thelr entrances, and he is supposed to be at the various side entrances to the stage, ready to take the figures after their brief strutting and relegate them to their hooks again. Opposite little John as he stands on the wooden shelf is pinned to the canvas a piece of coarse brown paper. In Italian are written on it various seem- ingly cabalistic words, numbered one, two, three, etc. One of the words is Cam- po, another is Camera. These are the di- rections for changing the scenes for the three acts. When this is to be done, Joha and Joe reach to a rack above them, un- roll 2 canvas scene and it drops down back of the one in use, which is whisked up and goes Into the rack, This scene shifting is done with a good deal of dex- terity and speed by the youthful manipu- lators. Joe's description of the action to come as he stands with the Princess La- vinia in his arms before her entrance is boy-like and graphic. “She is goin’ to make a date with a feller,” he wispers, as Lavinia leaps forward. But the wooden shelf and the figures on it form the fascifjating center of behind the scenes. The face of Marlano is a study. He forgets audience and all around him in the more impassioned scenes of the play and he lives the parts of his pud- pets. Little John brings on to the stage with a graceful sweep of her long, flowing veil, Angelica, a fair maiden with whom ¥errau, a son OI tne ming oI Dpain, is i love. Ferrau greets her with “O bella principessa.” After the mellow tones of Mariano, come like velvet the sweet tones of Angelica in the voice of little John— “Ah, mio caro Ferrau.” The lad is look- ing straight down into the face of the wooden maiden, and he has forgotten everything but the action of the play. And so it goes, this fascinating thing of putting the life of the human voice into figures of wood. Joham does not know fourteen plays by heart, and so he liter- ally takes some of his lines from the mouth of his father, who whispers them to him in a sort of running commentary between the speeches of the warriors and princes. John reads all the female parts, and at the same time puts the figures through thir paces with a dexterous tura of his hand and wrist. The leather brace- let which he also wears lessens the dan- ger of spraining or dislocating the wrst, for these figures have weight if held and moved for a length of time. And more than vigorous are some of the movements, for the play ends for one night with a fight, or rather a battle, be- tween the rival forces. The air is for a few moments a maze of swords, goldea helments and flowing plumes. The hel- mets crash as the warriors come together with an impact that is furious and dead- ly, so much so that it excites the two Joes, who wait at the side entrance to drag away the remains, quite as much as the rapt audience. At the curtain fall the stage is strewn with the dead, many of wkom show the hooks that held their heads to the body. They bave-been be- headed by swords wielded by the war- riors and gulded by the dexterous hands above. Then the pilano gives forth more dramatic music and the audience strolls forth into the night, many of them to be in the same spot on the following even- ing. And truly the show is worth go- ing a goodly distance to see and hear, but it is best of all when seen from both before and behind the scenes. Just a block or so away on Broadway is the Teatro delle Varieta, which is quite American in its equipment. Its raanager is Giuseppe Smario, in dally life a wine merchant. On Saturday and Sun- day nights only are its doors open for performances, and then one has to pay 25 and 50 cents for seats in the small up- stairs auditorium. The audlence is usu- ally composed of the better class of Ital- fans, and they bring their families of children. Instead of an orchestra there Is a plano here also, and in this case it is presided over by a very young Itallan girl, Signorina Avedano. She plays as though it were a pastime, and there is & delightful informality in her ‘vicinity. Children crowd around her sometimes as she plays. The gallery in this theater gces across the back of the house, and gometimes its front row is a study In faces. The company playing here now is composed of amateurs, clustered round the star, Arturo Godl, once a noted clown in Italy, then a newspaper writer in this Y ALFRED DEZENDORF THE RING \oF, HUN&I}RY. country and now a genuine comedlan. In the company also is the Signorina Claud- ina Avedano, sister of Signor Avedano, the one time sweet singer of the Tivolk The programme consists of thres short comedies usually, and they are given and recelved In the laughter-loving spirit of Italy. To make up a party and take in both these theaters of the Itallan quar- ter in one evening provides an entertain- ment that cannot be surpassed in San Francisco. REFORITED CANNIBALS OF THE FLI ISLANDS. WR! R in the Scientific American says of a recent visit to the Fiji islands: “I met an aged man At Mibau who gave me much inter- esting Information on cannibalism. His father, he saild, had been a famous trencherman in the good old days, and al- though he denied that he himself had ever eaten the flesh of his kind, yet in the course of his description he fingered my arms and pinched my legs and poked me In the ribs in a manner which seemed to me not altogether platonic. Fijian flesh, he stated, was superior to that of white men, who tasted of the salt they ate with almost everything—while a tough old sailor was practically a waste of raw material from the tobacco and grog with which a life before the mast Has a ten- dency to flavor the human system. In- terrogated as to choice cuts, he gave the palm to the head—the brains and eyes being particularly desirable, and the cheeks, especially In young subjects, sukmitting to baking ver§y kindly indeed. The upper part of the arm, too, and the calf and the upper portion of the leg, were mnot to be despised—but, said the epicure, as for the rest of the body, ‘throw him away.” Im the afternoon this interesting savage came around for me to get my gun and go into the bush with bhim, where he would ‘show me plenty parrots. After the enthusiasm of his morning description, however, I thought it prudent to decline.” The Fijlans are a stalwart race; very tall and muscular, for the most part their skins are soft as velvet from enointing with coacoanut ofl, thelr coun- tenances strong and In most cases pleas- ing, rather than forbidding. A thing that at once impresses the visitor is the varied and striking manner In which both men and women—the former especlaily—ar- range their hair. Here a man is seea whose pate geems covered with a thick coating of hitewash; there another, whose locks, radiating in every direction from his skull as if they were electrified, could hardly be inserted in a bushel baske:. The former state is but a preliminary to the second. The natives plaster their hair with a kind of paste made of powdered coral mixed with water, which, after hardening and then being broken up, stif- fens the hair and bleaches it from its natural black to odd shades and dull yellow, thus prodycing strange effects in combination with the dark brown skins of the people. A Fljlan house is perfectly adapted to the climate and affords protection allke against the torrid rays of the sun and the frequent tropical deluges of rain. It is made by driving stout posts into the ground, across which are laid beams fas- tened to the supports by ropes of coacoa- nut fiber,and from this framework rafters are run up to a central ridge pole. Roof and sides are covered with a thatch of grass and reeds, sometimes two or three feet thick, the whole structure be- ing elevated on rough blocks of coral, thus affording freedom from the damp- ness of the ground. In ancient times the feur corner supports of chiefs’ houses were set in holes wherein captured enemies had been buried alive, while a chaste and agreeable decoration of the front would be of a row of stones in- dicating the number of captives the chief had eaten duringghis career. Thus, the tales of stones of a famous chief, counted by a2 missionary in 1849, were 872, for which the chief,apologized, saying thers should have been more, but he had been indolent of late and had neglected to post up bis ledger. OPERATING. THE MAr IONETTES