Museu da Marioneta

Joaquim Pinto, Setubal’s Faustino (1899-1968), descended from a family of puppeteers, his father being a famous puppeteer called Faustino Duarte, who owned a pavilion with the curious name of Guignol Pavilion. He was considered one of the greatest puppet theatre directors, having reached great successes all over Portugal and in Spain.

According to Joaquim Pinto himself, in an interview with H. Delgado, his pavilion measured about 20 metres long by 7 metres wide. The success of the traditional skeleton dance with Widow Carolina was such that we got to work for 16 consecutive hours. The performances were presented by three “reeds” and two assistants, apart from a small orchestra, formed by a trombone, a concertina, a saxophone, an accordion and a trumpet.

If we imagine the set of material needed for this itinerant theatre and respective maintenance, we think of its high costs. However, at the peak of the fairs and according to Joaquim Pinto’s words, “the puppet theatre enthusiasts were counted by the tenths of thousands. Charging one cent for each ticket, there were many fairs where we completely filled a chest, like those where we used to keep the puppets, with one escudo coins. And there were so many performances we presented at the more attended fairs that I only took the “reed” out of my mouth to eat” .

Joaquim Pinto owned a large collection (he got to own about 400 puppets) that he had inherited from his masters and friends, apart from being the major holder of the national traditional repertoire of puppet theatre, which was transmitted from generation to generation; unfortunately, his death occurred before he could pass on all his knowledge.