![GIORDANO, Umberto (1867-1948). Autograph music manuscript, Mese Mariano, an opera, n.d. [1910], composing score, in pencil, numerous revisions and additions, virtually complete, (lacking apparently four or five pages), approximately 155 pages, folio (330 x 270mm), (occasional rust marks from paperclips), pages from libretto in the hand of the librettist Salvatore di Giacomo and with additions and annotations by Giordano tipped in on facing pages, 32½ pages, 4to, later marbled boards. Provenance. Olga Spatz, widow of Umberto Giordano (pencilled inscription on rear pastedown identifying the work as part of her estate at her death in 1985).](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/CKS/2001_CKS_06521_0096_000(035154).jpg?w=1)
Details
GIORDANO, Umberto (1867-1948). Autograph music manuscript, Mese Mariano, an opera, n.d. [1910], composing score, in pencil, numerous revisions and additions, virtually complete, (lacking apparently four or five pages), approximately 155 pages, folio (330 x 270mm), (occasional rust marks from paperclips), pages from libretto in the hand of the librettist Salvatore di Giacomo and with additions and annotations by Giordano tipped in on facing pages, 32½ pages, 4to, later marbled boards. Provenance. Olga Spatz, widow of Umberto Giordano (pencilled inscription on rear pastedown identifying the work as part of her estate at her death in 1985).
A significant work of the Verismo movement. After the experiment with idyll in Marcella (1907), Giordano returned to the grim irony of Verismo with the present work, having attended a performance in Milan of Salvatore di Giacomo's successful play 'O mese mariano. Di Giacomo himself agreed to transform the work into a one-act opera. The scene is set in the courtyard of an children's home attached to the royal 'Albergo dei poveri' in Naples. Carmela, the mother of one of the children, recounts her story to one of the nuns and the Superior: seduced and abandoned, she had married a labourer in order to lend respectability to her child, whom she was then in any case forced to hand over to the children's home. She goes into the church to pray, and during her absence one of the sisters informs the Superior that Carmela's child has died during the night. The nun decides to conceal the truth, and informs Carmela that her child cannot see her because he is with the choir, singing hymns to the Virgin; Carmela leaves a cake for him, and departs, weeping. Though rather fragmentary at first, the music builds up an unmistakeable melancholic power from the entry of Carmela. The opera's thematic similarities with Puccini's Suor Angelica are unmistakeable.
Verismo was initiated by the enormous success of Mascagni's Cavelleria rusticana (1889), and was characterised by its adoption of naturalistic tendencies towards depictions of the lower social strata, local colour and violent passions; its most prominent exponents were Mascagni, Massenet, Leoncavallo and Giordano. The son of a pharmacist, Umberto Giordano was educated in the Naples Conservatory; he is remembered for the success of two operas, Andrea Chenier (1896) and Fedora (1898). First performed in Palermo on 17 March 1910, Mese Mariano was considered by Mascagni as one of Giordano's best works, and he conducted it himself at the Opera di Roma.
A significant work of the Verismo movement. After the experiment with idyll in Marcella (1907), Giordano returned to the grim irony of Verismo with the present work, having attended a performance in Milan of Salvatore di Giacomo's successful play 'O mese mariano. Di Giacomo himself agreed to transform the work into a one-act opera. The scene is set in the courtyard of an children's home attached to the royal 'Albergo dei poveri' in Naples. Carmela, the mother of one of the children, recounts her story to one of the nuns and the Superior: seduced and abandoned, she had married a labourer in order to lend respectability to her child, whom she was then in any case forced to hand over to the children's home. She goes into the church to pray, and during her absence one of the sisters informs the Superior that Carmela's child has died during the night. The nun decides to conceal the truth, and informs Carmela that her child cannot see her because he is with the choir, singing hymns to the Virgin; Carmela leaves a cake for him, and departs, weeping. Though rather fragmentary at first, the music builds up an unmistakeable melancholic power from the entry of Carmela. The opera's thematic similarities with Puccini's Suor Angelica are unmistakeable.
Verismo was initiated by the enormous success of Mascagni's Cavelleria rusticana (1889), and was characterised by its adoption of naturalistic tendencies towards depictions of the lower social strata, local colour and violent passions; its most prominent exponents were Mascagni, Massenet, Leoncavallo and Giordano. The son of a pharmacist, Umberto Giordano was educated in the Naples Conservatory; he is remembered for the success of two operas, Andrea Chenier (1896) and Fedora (1898). First performed in Palermo on 17 March 1910, Mese Mariano was considered by Mascagni as one of Giordano's best works, and he conducted it himself at the Opera di Roma.
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