Who’s pulling strings?

THESE days, it seems that puppets and marionettes are onstage everywhere -- and not just on “Avenue Q.”

At New York’s Metropolitan Opera, soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domas has been singing the part of Cio-Cio-San in “Madama Butterfly” amid a cast of cloaked puppeteers, with another puppet in the “role” of her son.

On this coast, the Salzburg Marionettes recently frolicked at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa in “The Magic Flute” and “Hansel and Gretel.” And in Manuel de Falla’s “Master Peter’s Puppet Show,” life-size puppets mixed it up with orchestra members at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Earlier in the year, Los Angeles Opera’s “Grendel” included fantastical creatures designed by Julie Taymor and Michael Curry, most manipulated or “worn” by humans. And later this month, the company’s new “Hansel and Gretel” will feature outsized creatures and plants animated by the actors inside.

What’s up next in L.A.? This week, REDCAT will present the avant-garde stagings of Poland’s Wroclaw Puppet Theater in “The Last Escape,” based on work by Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz.

-- Diane Haithman