FULL MESE MARIANO (Giordano) Foggia 2011 Daniela Milanese, Antonietta Delli Carri, Maria Luigia Martino

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Mese Mariano  
• Composer: Giordano Umberto  
• Libretto: Salvatore Di Giacomo, adapted from his play 'O Mese Mariano    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Foggia, Italy, Festival Musica nelle corti di Capitanata  
• Recorded: June 9, 2011
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Daniela Milanese, Antonietta Delli Carri, Maria Luigia Martino, Serena Grieco, Gaetana Frasca, Nazario Gualano, Carmela Pia Raffaele, Ripalta Bufo, Giuseppina Crincoli
• Conductor: Pablo Varela  
• Orchestra: Orchestra Sinfonica del Conservatorio “Umberto Giordano” di Foggia  
• Chorus: Coro voci bianche del Conservatorio “Umberto Giordano” di Foggia, Coro voci bianche “Dante Alighieri” di Lucera, Coro voci bianche “Lombardo Radice” di Lucera  
• Chorus Master: Barbara Nespoli, Michelangelo Martino  
• Stage Director: Patrizia Di Martino  
• Stage Designer: Giuseppe Grasso  
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Pablo Varela  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
• Subtitles: nosubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Mese mariano (Mary’s Month) is an opera in one act by Umberto Giordano. Its Italian libretto by Salvatore Di Giacomo was adapted from his play ‘O Mese Mariano, which was in turn adapted from his novella, Senza vederlo (Without Seeing Him). It premiered at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo on 17 March 1910. The opera is described as a bozzetto lirico (lyric sketch) and has a running time of 35 minutes. It tells the story of a woman who visits an orphanage to see her child. Racked with guilt at having abandoned him, she is unaware that he had died the night before.

The play which forms the basis for the libretto was immensely popular in its day. Written in Neapolitan language, it was first performed at the Teatro San Fernando in Naples on 20 January 1900. Giordano, who had seen the play in Milan, was deeply touched by it and asked Di Giacomo to adapt it for an opera. Di Giacomo accepted and agreed to make some changes from the original drama. The setting of the opening scene which allowed Giordano to include a children’s chorus was changed to the sunny courtyard in the orphanage with views of the Neapolitan landscape in the distance. The roles of the nuns also became more prominent, making the opera largely one of female voices. In this respect and in terms of its plot, Giordano’s work pre-figures Puccini’s Suor Angelica which was composed some seven years later.

Synopsis
Time: 19th century
Setting: an orphanage in Naples
It is Easter Sunday and the children are playing and singing as they await the arrival of the Contessa, one of the benefactors of the orphanage. When she arrives, they serenade her as she distributes gifts to them. One of the children, Valentina, then reads a sonnet written in the Contessa’s honour by Don Fabbiano. After the Contessa leaves and the children have been led to their rooms, Carmela enters the courtyard bringing a freshly baked Easter cake for her little boy and asks Suor Pazienza if she might see him. Carmela recognizes the nun as her old childhood friend. Overcome with guilt, she tells Suor Pazienza and the Mother Superior how she had been seduced and abandoned as a young girl and left with a son to bring up on her own. She eventually married a worker who refused to have the child of another man in his house and forced her to leave him in the orphanage. Carmela then goes into the chapel to pray. While she is gone some of the nuns arrive to tell the Mother Superior that Carmela’s son had died in the night. The Mother Superior decides not to tell her, explaining instead that child cannot see her because he is with the choir practising for the Mary’s Month celebrations. Carmela leaves the orphanage in tears.

Quoted from Wikipedia

 

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