own open and watched the procession enter and
pass up the nave among crowds of people who waved palm-branches.

After this I called at the Teatro Sicilia, the marionette theatre of
Gregorio Grasso, and discovered that he was devoting all the week to the
Story of the Passion and would begin that evening with the event which I
had seen commemorated by the procession in the cathedral. Here was an
opportunity to see something which I had often wished to see and about
which I had talked with Achille Greco and his sons in their theatre at
Palermo, where they also do the Passion in Holy Week, using a play in
verse written by Filippo Orioles of which they have a MS. copy; but they
have not performed it recently because it takes too much preparation.
Orioles wrote his play for living actors, and it is laid out to get all
the events into one performance instead of being a series of seven
performances extending over a whole week as in Catania.

Gregorio Grasso took me behind, where one of his assistants, Carmelo,
showed me the preparations and told me about the performance. The first
scene was to be the meeting of the Sanhedrin and the beginning of the
conspiracy of Annas and Caiaphas to destroy the Nazarene; this makes a
firm foundation on which the rest of the drama is built. The second
scene would be the departure of Christ with Mary; after that would come
the Entry with Palms into Jerusalem, and the evening was to conclude with
a cinematograph show.

As a rule in this theatre the back scene is only about a third of the way
down the stage, the figures appear in front of it and are manipulated by
men who stand on a platform behind, leaning over a strong bar which runs
along the top of the scene, their heads, shoulders and arms being
concealed by a piece of scenery which falls just low enough. The entry
into Jerusalem had been prepared behind this back scene; it was a set
group representing Christ on the ass, surrounded by apostles carrying
palms, and was to be disclosed by the removal of the back scene, the bar
and the platform in front of which the meeting of the Sanhedrin would be
shown.

But I was not to witness the performance because Turiddu Balistrieri
wanted me to go to the Teatro Giacinta Pezzana and see a special
performance of _La Signora dalle Camelie_ in which he and some of his
family, who are all artists, were to take part. I could not go to both
and chose Dumas because, in the first place, being Turiddu's