PINOCCHIO, histoire d'une marionnette en bois (French text)

Our musical story is based on “The Adventures of Pinocchio. A Puppet Story,” a novel by Italian author Carlo Collodi (pen name of the Florentine writer Carlo Lorenzini) written in Florence in 1881. The book is a classic of children’s literature, and it is rightly considered among the great works of Italian literature. The main character of the novel is Pinocchio, a wooden puppet carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto. Collodi erroneously calls it a puppet (by definition a puppet is operated by inserting one’s hand inside a sock), even if Pinocchio is more similar to a marionette (that is a wooden puppet operated by a puppeteer who uses strings to move its body). Thanks to a supernatural event, the piece of wood used to build Pinocchio is animated, so the puppet moves autonomously and has all the typical features of children. Our main character is basically good, but often gives into the temptation to follow bad companies and is prone to lying. Because of this he often finds himself in trouble, from which, however, he always manages to get away. His most defining feature is his nose, which stretches beyond measure when he tells lies. Collodi initially published the work as a serialized story in a newspaper for children. After eight episodes, though, the author wanted to conclude the novel with Pinocchio dying a gruesome death because of his innumerable faults: hanged, “he stretched his legs, gave a great shudder, and hung stiff and numb.” However, following a number of young readers’ protests, the newspaper convinced Collodi to continue the story, which eventually concluded with the classical ending that everyone knows today: the puppet takes on the features of a boy in the flesh. With over 240 translations into many languages, it is the most translated and bestselling book of Italian literature.