The true story of Pinocchio

Disney turned Callodi's juvenile anti-hero into a saccharine-sweet innocent. The Royal Opera House's new version restores the dark side his creator intended. Christopher Hirst reports

This week Pinocchio has yet another reincarnation - on the stage of the Royal Opera House for its first ever production of the Italian fable.

The director and choreographer Will Tuckett had a sell-out success with his previous seasonal production of The Wind in the Willows. This time he has chosen a yarn that is arguably as potent as the Christmas story itself. According to an Italian web site devoted to Pinocchio, it is "the book with the greatest number of copies in print second only to the Bible and the Koran."

In Britain, we most commonly associate Pinocchio with the Disney film of 1940. The animated version features a wooden puppet, innocent and easily misled, who eventually achieves his ambition of being transformed into a human boy. Pinocchio's best-known physical characteristic - a nose that extends when he is caught lying - remains a godsend for political cartoonists. The politician with a long nose has become an enjoyable commonplace of the opinion pages. This cartoon archetype was repeatedly applied to Richard Nixon, but achieved its greatest flowering with Tony Blair, whose wide-eyed faux innocence is indeed reminiscent of Disney's Pinocchio.

Tuckett's Pinocchio seems likely to eschew the sentimentality of Disney's character, a naïve who was nudged towards goodness by his conscience in the form of the know-all Jiminy Cricket. The Royal Opera House Pinocchio sounds the type who will be in distinct danger of receiving an Asbo from the magistrates across the road in Bow Street. He will "sing, dance ... but above all create mischief. On his quest to become a real live boy, Pinocchio faces temptations and dangers in the form of Stromboli, the sinister puppetmaster, and his wicked henchmen."

If this tale of mischief and temptation sounds a good deal darker than the "When You Wish Upon A Star" sentiments of Disney, it is still much brighter than the Adventures of Pinocchio as they first appeared in newspaper form. The Italian journalist Carlo Lorenzini (1826-90), who used the pen-name Carlo Callodi for his fiction, offered a "bit of foolishness" about a wooden puppet to a journal with the snappy title Children's Magazine in 1881. His story reflected the very real poverty that existed at that time in Callodi's native Tuscany. In the Disney version, Geppetto, who carved Pinocchio, was a wealthy artisan, but Callodi described him as a penurious wood-carver who worked in a hole under the steps of a town house. Disney's Pinocchio springs to life because a fairy answers Geppetto's desperate plea for offspring. Callodi's creation starts out as a bit of firewood that cries out "Ouch! You hurt me!' when bashed with an axe by a carpenter. Understandably alarmed, the carpenter passes the bit of wood on to Geppetto who wants to carve a marionette. This proves to be a mistake. As soon as his mouth is finished, Pinocchio laughs at his creator and sticks out his tongue. Once he has arms he snatches off Geppatto's wig. As soon as his legs are finished, he runs away. Novelist Alison Lurie points out that he is far more self-conscious and complex, also several years older than Disney's cute little boy. "He is not only naïve, but impulsive, rude, selfish and violent ... From the psychologist's point of view he represents the amoral, self-centred small child, all uncensored id." In many respects, Callodi's creation sounds the perfect protagonist for a panto in 2005.

After being caught by a policeman and returned to his foster father, Pinocchio adopts the tactic that many children utilise when foiled. He throws himself to the ground and refuses to move. A crowd gathers and blames Geppetto for the toy's terrible behaviour. ("Like some modern experts on child development," comments Ms Lurie.) They persuade a policeman to jail the toy carver. Afterwards, Pinocchio is pricked by his conscience, which takes the form of a Talking Cricket. The insect berates him for running away and warns of the dangers of idleness. In a response that is reminiscent of today's pop stars, Pinocchio says the only trade he desires is "eating, drinking, sleeping, having fun and living the life of a vagabond from morning to night." When the Cricket responds that "the poorhouse or the prison" lies in wait for anyone pursuing that career path, Pinocchio throws a mallet at the moralising insect and kills it. Goodbye Jiminy.

When he had written 17 action-packed episodes, Callodi tired of his nightmarish creation and killed off Pinocchio by hanging him from the branch of a great oak. Such a denouement would not have made a very cheery yarn. Fortunately for Disney, the Royal Opera House and a host of other adapters, Callodi was persuaded by readers of the Children's Magazine to revive his wooden monster for another 19 episodes. Pinocchio's adventures include being beaten and starved, almost drowned, transformed into a dog and a donkey, nearly being burnt alive on a kitchen fire and being swallowed by a great shark. With the assistance of a Blue Fairy, he is finally redeemed in the last two episodes. Through hard work in a puppet theatre, he is able to save his foster father from pauperdom by paying him 40 gold coins. He has become "un ragazzino per bene", which translates as both a good boy and a real boy.

For Pinocchio's threadbare background, Callodi drew on his own humble beginnings as the child of a cook and a servant in Florence. While describing the poverty of Tuscany in his dark, but resonant narrative, he also included the region's passion for cuisine. The Fox and the Cat, a couple of shysters, persuade Pinocchio to buy them triglie al pomodoro (red mullet in tomato sauce) and trippa alla parmigiana (tripe with parmesan). These excellent dishes inexplicably fail to feature in the Disney film. Liberal in his political views, Callodi ran a satirical paper that was closed down by the authorities. He was dubious about the church and scathing about the educational standards of his time. After translating French fairy stories, he produced his own fantasies in a believable setting. Stressing the importance of hard work and making one's own way in the world, Pinocchio also offered an unvarnished view of human nature - in the form of a wooden toy.

It is, however, Pinocchio's desire to be human that imbues the tale with a strange appeal. The story is a response to the obsession with automata that flowered in the 18th century and has continued to intrigue us ever since. The story was first filmed in 1911 by Italian pioneer Count Giulio Cesare. This was followed by a Japanese puppet version in 1932. Several cartoon features based on the story were made in Italy during the Thirties. When Disney began adapting the story in the late Thirties, the narrative stayed fairly close to the Callodi original. Halfway through production, the company's founding father gave it the thumb's down. Not entertaining enough, thundered the dictatorial Walt.

After binning the existing footage, the characters were redesigned and Jiminy Cricket was brought in to "give a little whistle". One critique maintains, "the endearing insect is what essentially bound the film together". Regarded by some critics as the most technically perfect of all Disney's animated features, the film got off to a faltering start when first released in 1940. The re-location of the story to Mitteleuropa proved to be ill-advised as America found itself steadily drawn into war against Germany. When first released, it only recouped half its $2.3 million production cost. Time magazine recently described the Disney feature as "tops for its blending of the animator's craft and a theme - that a child is not human until he can feel loss - that can move viewers of every age and for all ages."

In recent years, the story has lost none of its appeal for filmmakers, though the results have not been impressive. Though he stayed close to the Collodi original, Oscar-winning director Roberto Bernigni's live-action version from 2002 was described in one review as "extremely annoying. He jumps all over the place and never shuts his mouth. This Pinocchio radiates idiocy."

A 1984 cartoon version is described on one website as "the worst remake in movie history", while a more lavish 1996 attempt is described by one Amazon purchaser as "Apparently aimed at very small children and the simple-minded." Francis Ford Coppola's long-cherished desire to make a live-action version collapsed in an avalanche of claims and counterclaims with Warner Brothers.

More distantly, the story of the puppet who becomes human may have inspired a tradition of robot movies from Metropolis to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg's AI. When Roy Batty, the rebel replicant leader in Blade Runner, demands "I want more life", it is the authentic voice of Pinocchio that we are hearing. Whether novel, cartoon or ballet, Pinocchio remains a work that reflects its audience.