Salvatore Rizzo

   
     
         I first learned about the Dante Place marionette theater while I was doing some research on a totally different subject. That is what I love about research - opening one door leads you to - more doors! The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library (Central Branch) has a collection of almost 200 scrapbooks in the Grosvenor Room. These were a Works Progress Administration project during the 1930s. They contain clippings from Buffalo newspapers dating from about 1900 onward, and they are a treasure trove of primary documents. Much of my information about Salvatore Rizzo came from these scrapbooks.

          Salvatore Rizzo was an Italian immigrant who came to Buffalo from Palermo sometime around 1900. According to a 1930 census I found at Ancestry.com, he would have been about 38 years old at the time of his arrival with his young family. Salvatore Rizzo settled his family on Canal Street. (The name of the street was still Canal; in 1909 it would be changed to Dante Place to reflect the new majority ethnicity of the neighborhood and to distance the street from its unsavory reputation as Canal Street.)

        Like most of the Italians who arrived in Buffalo between 1880 and 1920, Rizzo's background was agricultural. He found work as a fruit peddler, which again was a common occupation for new Italian immigrants. But there was something that set Salvatore Rizzo apart: he came from eight generations of pupari back in Palermo. Pupari is the plural form of puparo - 'puppet master' in Italian. His father had begun teaching him the skill and the art of the marionette performance as a boy, and he had worked in his father's 'teatrino', as his father worked with his grandfather before him. It was a family tradition, as Salvatore's son Frank proudly told a  Buffalo Times reporter in 1932. "My father can trace his ancestry eight generations and find that they were all great masters in marionettes. It was the great show in Italy."

        The Rizzo marionettes were hand carved from Italian wood by generations of the Rizzo men. Salvatore had about 75 puppets, many of which he had carved and painted himself. He also fashioned stage sets, painted scenery, and designed costumes for the marionettes.

        Salvatore Rizzo started his marionette theater in a tiny storefront on Canal Street (hereafter referred to as Dante Place), and every night after work he put on plays there. His audience crammed into the tiny storefront to see tales of Charlemagne and his Paladins come to life on the handmade stage.

          Does anyone remember hearing older relatives talk about the marionettes or the shows or the theater? I would love to hear your comments, as always.

This 1921 photograph from the Buffalo Express shows Salvatore Rizzo on the left, his son Anthony on the right, and three of their magnificent marionettes. They are standing in the rear of 106 Dante Place. Photo courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

References: "Buffalonians Discover Marionette Theater", Buffalo Express, April 5, 1908. Buffalo's Foreign Population, Vol. 1,p. 146. Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Grosvenor Room.

United States Census, 1930. http://www.ancestry.com
Grosso, Thomas X. The Erie Canal's Western Terminus-Commercial Slip, Harbor Development, and Canal District. http://www.eriecanalharbor.com/pdf/72BuffaloGuide.pdf