An important testimony to promote and deepen the study of one of the “popular” sectors of Italian theatre, The Puppet House in Ravenna gathers around sixty marionettes, 150 puppets, over a hundred stage sets, as many handwritten scripts, and numerous paper materials from tours (posters, letters, notices, permits), as well as scattered materials (wooden heads, puppet hands, puppet and marionette costumes). The marionettes come from the “Fantocci Lirici Yambo” company of Enrico Novelli (1875-1944), from the Picchi Family, and obviously from the family company.
Among the puppets, a series of traditional Emilian masks stand out (Fagiolino, Sandrone, Doctor Balanzone) that belonged to the Burattineide company of Agostino Galliano Serra, found by a researcher in an ancient Bolognese church and added to the Collection in recent decades. Among the handwritten scripts, twelve are of significant value, being written in the first half of the nineteenth century by Ariodante Monticelli, the family patriarch; the others bear the signatures of other family generations: Vittorio Cesare Monticelli, Genoveffa Peli Monticelli, Otello Monticelli, Vasco Monticelli, William Monticelli; the rest are works by well-known puppet theatre artists: Enrico Novelli, the Picchi Brothers, Ettore Forni, Ciro Bertoni, Agostino Galliano Serra, to name a few.
Particular exceptions are represented by some scripts by Mario Bellio. All stage sets are made of paper except one on canvas, gifted to Otello by the famous Bolognese puppeteer Ciro Bertoni. Many of these were originally made for puppet theatre, with lengths reaching six to seven meters wide and three to four meters high, but most have been resized to be used in the puppet “cabin.”
The precious stage sets belonging to the Picchi Family and the patriarch Ariodante Monticelli date back to the first half of the nineteenth century, while those painted by Agostino Galliano Serra are from the early twentieth century and those created by William Monticelli are from the immediate postwar period. An exhibition section (puppets, stage sets, posters) is also dedicated to the last twenty-five years of work of the Teatro del Drago, founded in 1979 by Andrea and Mauro Monticelli.
