Pulcinella

Pulcinella is the mask of the Neapolitan popular theater, one of the main Italian regional masks. He is hunchbacked and has a hooked nose. It has to a large extent defects and vices that tradition attributes to the peasants; but he has his own philosophy and, like all Neapolitans, he sings. Before assuming the characteristics with which it has come to us, the costume has undergone many transformations over time: today it is all white (shirt with a tight collar at the waist, wide trousers, sugar loaf hat), with the exception of the black mask. Its golden centuries were the seventeenth and eighteenth; its main stage, from the second half of the eighteenth century, the S. Carlino of Naples. Famous Pulcinella, among the many: S. Fiorillo - perhaps the creator of the type - in the sixteenth century, A. Calcese and M. Fracanzano in the seventeenth century and A. Petito in the nineteenth century; in our times Eduardo De Filippo also gave it life. He has been successfully 'exported' to France (Polichinelle), Germany (Polizenelle), England (Punch), Spain (Pulchinelo) and has become the favorite character of young puppet theater enthusiasts.