In Peter Nowlen's mind, no actor possesses a greater ability to captivate an audience than a puppet.

That's why, as conductor and artistic director of the Academy at All Hallows Orchestra and Chorus, Nowlen couldn't resist fleshing out the wonderment of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" with puppetry.

"Puppets do not carry their own personality into the theater," said Nowlen. "So it's easier for the audience to identify with them … because a puppet can be truly timeless."

Nowlen is teaming up with master puppeteer Art Grueneberger and his Puppet Art Theater for this story, about a boy named Amahl who lives with his mother and works as a shepherd. One day, three kings arrive at their home on a search for a holy child.

A professional puppeteer since 1993, Grueneberger graduated from UC Davis with a master of fine arts degree in its acting program. This will be his third performance as a puppeteer in "Amahl." All of those have been with the All Hallows Music series.

Grueneberger's puppet designs were inspired by the 1,000-year-old Chinese rod style. Five puppeteers will work below the puppets and control them with long rods on the bodies and hands.

Grueneberger designed the puppets, then sent his patterns off to Kristen Phillips of Michigan. The heads are constructed of latex and the bodies made of foam and fabric. The five Amahl puppets typically cost $3,000.

For the design of the three Magi, Amahl and Mother, Grueneberger was inspired by a series of puppets he saw in a book that were used by London's Little Angel Theater.

"This Amahl puppet had really big, innocent eyes," Grueneberger said. "The larger the eye, the more likely an audience will identify with that character.

"With this opera, you want the audience to really get attached to the Amahl character, you want them to fall in love with it, and that will bring the audience into the story. That attachment is difficult to get unless the design is just right."

For the Mother and the Amahl puppets, special dish mechanisms are built into the rods that, when rotated, allow the heads to swivel and nod. This makes for an increasingly lifelike appearance, Grueneberger said.

But for this reason, "Amahl" poses special challenges for the puppeteer.

"I'm used to working with rod puppets that are around 18 inches to 2 feet tall. The Amahl puppets are about 4 feet tall, and they can be tricky to balance as they're top-heavy," Grueneberger said.

And the challenges are musical, too.

"The puppeteers aren't voicing for the puppets, as it is hard to find opera-singing puppeteers," Grueneberger explained.

In the production, opera singers will be next to the puppet stage. Drew Stassen of Vacaville and Ryan Nelson of Mill Valley will split the role of Amahl.

In the Sacramento performances, Teressa Baldwin and Ellen Bachmann will share the role of the Mother, with Julie Anne Miller singing it in Grass Valley. Academy scholars and CSUS students Jon Hansen, Brandon Anderson and David Paterson will sing the Magi roles.

The great challenge for the puppeteers is how to be in complete sync with the singers so the combination of vocalist and puppet are seamless. This will be especially tricky because the roles of Mother and Amahl are shared by multiple singers.

Menotti's 45-minute opera, now a perennial favorite, will be performed at Grass Valley's Peace Lutheran Church on Friday and Sacramento's All Hallow's Church on Saturday.

The idea of doing "Amahl" as a puppet show originated when Nowlen worked with Grueneberger in a 2004 puppet production of "Man of La Mancha" at UC Davis.

Nowlen took direction of the All Hallows Orchestra that year and decided to perform Amahl then and in two successive years. The conductor has also collaborated with the capital region's other notable puppeteer, Richard Bay, on other productions.

Using puppets, Nowlen said, solved the dilemma of putting on such a show in the small confines of the All Hallows Church.

The puppets, which are half the size of a human, tap into a long tradition in opera. Puppetry has been used in several forms, from Peking Opera to the recent work of Philip Glass.

While not a big opera fan, Grueneberger said that working on "Amahl" has brought him one step closer to embracing the art form.

"Using puppetry makes opera a bit more accessible," he said, "and it will make the art form a bit more enjoyable to audiences who don't usually see opera."