Farewell to master puppeteer Rahul Bernardelli, son of an artist who brought puppet theatre to Sardinia.

He inherited the legacy of an artistic family that enchanted children and adults with the art of puppetry. He did so with passion and the conviction that puppetry should be a pure form of education and resistance. Rahul Bernardelli, an artist from Bologna whose destiny was tied to Sardinia, has died. He was the son of Lucia Sarzi, a partisan on the front lines of the fight against Nazism and Fascism. She instilled in him not only the art of pulling strings and giving voice to wooden pieces, but also a love of freedom and the sense of a work that should have a civic value. These were the same teachings of his uncle Otello, another key figure in his development, a fierce opponent of the Fascist regime, a formidable talent, and the creator of the masks that, after World War II, gave voice and soul to the literary characters created by Gianni Rodari.

Rahul Bernardelli moved to Sardinia after his debut in the early 1970s in his native Bologna. He made his name on the island through the activities of the cultural association he founded and directed: Le Compagnie del Cocomero.

"For this company," recalls Rita Atzeri, actress and director of Crogiuolo, a company to which Bernardelli was deeply attached, "he created and performed countless works, shows that enchanted children and, at the same time, made adults reflect. Works like "Fuori!" or "The Prince and the Spider" testify to his extraordinary ability to speak on a child's scale, defending the purity of childhood from the ugliness of everyday life through a magic box of music, words, and imagination. For decades, Rahul brought puppetry to every corner of Sardinia and Italy, demonstrating that a puppet can communicate much more than a long speech ."

Rahul Bernardelli, following the teachings of Lucia and Otello, has championed the cause of the ANPI, the National Association of Italian Partisans , guardian of the memory of the Resistance and the values enshrined in the Constitution. Two years ago, during a meeting organized in Cagliari by Crogiuolo and the Sardinian Institute for the History of Anti-Fascism and Contemporary Society (Issasco), he and his cousin Mauro Sarzi shared the fascinating story of a family of artists who have always believed in the magic and expressive power of puppetry.