| MOVIEMAKING IN LITTLE ITALY has spanned
generations, beginning with silent films by heralded director of the
early 20th century D.W. Griffith, seen in the center of the photo
at left, and continuing to present day with modern film genius Martin
Scorsese, pictured in the photo at right with actor Leonardo DiCaprio,
on the set of his epic Gangs of New York (2002). |
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| By Sabbia
Auriti, Ph.D, Editor
“…For I had a story that no
one could beat!
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street
But Dad said quite calmly,
‘Just draw up your stool
And tell me the sights
On the way home from school.’
There was so much to tell, I just couldn’t begin!
Dad looked at me sharply and
pulled at his chin.
He frowned at me sternly
from there is his seat,
‘Was there nothing to look
at… no people to greet?
Did nothing excite you or
make your heart beat?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, growing red
as a beet,
‘But a plain horse and wagon
on Mulberry Street.’ ”
(From: And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, by
Dr. Seuss. New York; Vanguard, 1937).
Beginning with director D.W. Griffith’s silent short
film depic-tions of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century,
Hollywood has always been
captivated by the myth and lore of Little Italy. His 1909
In Little Italy, followed in 1913 by The Hero of Little Italy,
literally set the stage for Manhattan’s Italian enclave
to become the actual stage for hundreds of American film favorites.
On the silver screen, Italians have a long history of being
portrayed in stereotypical roles, including “ethicized”
priests, cops, politicians, and gangsters. While director
John Ford was
using “All American” stories to embody the basic
myths and tensions of Irish American life, Frank Capra pitted
Italian family values against the Anglo success ethic, turning
out social comedies about oppressed working people.
Several decades later, masters Martin Scorsese and Francis
Ford Coppola were highly critical
of their religio-ethnic heritage, though they gradually discovered
that to outline its weakness was to fashion a critical mirror
of mainstream
America. Both directors revisited their Little Italy, the
neighborhood of their childhood, and revealed through the
camera lens how it shaped their work inthe genre of film.
Key scenes from The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola’s
epic family saga – were filmed in
Little Italy. These include the Christening scene, in which
Coppola’s family members acted as extras, and the set
representing the interior of the Genco Olive Oil Company,
which was built on the fourth floor of an old loft building
at 128 Mott Street, at
the corner of Hester. |
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Scorsese, considered one of
the most significant and influential of post-war American
filmmakers, produced a rich documentary featuring his parents,
Charles and Catherine Scorsese, both of whom made cameo appearances
in most of his movies. The documentary was entitled Italianamerican
(1974). It is a joyous, tender documentary, a portrait of
a marriage steeped in clan and ethnic heritage.
The film is a counterpart to Scorsese’s 1970s classics
Mean Streets, complete with Scorsese’s signature style
of macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption,
and a gritty New York locale, and Taxi Driver, the film that
in 1976 sent shockwaves through the cinema world for its unrelenting
grim and violent portrayal of man’s slow descent into
psychosis in a hellishly conceived Manhattan.
In Italianamerican – “The best film I ever made;
it really freed me in style,” he claims – the
director conducts a freewheeling interview with his parents
in
their walk-up on Elizabeth Street. (The street is now the
trendiest block in “NoLita,” once the “mean
streets” of
Scorsese’s earlier films.) During the interview Mrs.
Scorsese, who played Joe Pesci’s mother in Goodfellas,
argues with her husband about home winemaking
techniques and interrupts her son repeatedly to tend to her
later anthologized spaghetti sauce. Scorsese purposely left
the hyphen out of the title, explaining that his parents “are
neither Italian nor American. They are one.”
After a troubled decade, the gangster epic Goodfellas (1990)
was a return to form for Scorsese and his most confident and
fully realized film since Raging Bull. Another return to Little
Italy, the film was considered one of the director’s
greatest achievements. In Goodfellas, the law replaces the
Church in the lives of Italian Americans to keep society’s
predators at bay. Like the Church, the law protects the people
while preserving a shady relationship with the gangster/warlords.
Martin Scorsese read the novel Gangs of New York in 1970 and
had wanted to adapt it into a film for a long time. A violent
tale of gang warfare in nineteenth century New York, Herbert
Asbury’s book offered a rare glimpse at the streets
of Scorsese’s youth as they were from the 1840s to the
1860s, before his Italian ancestors arrived.
In Gangs of New York, the director also saw a chance to make
an American movie in the tradition of Luchino Visconti’s
The Leopard (1963) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976),
a bloody wide screen epic that mixes elemental stories of
love and revenge with a vision of the larger historical forces
that shaped the society we know today.
Among the restaurants, pastry shops, and novelty stores that
line Mulberry Street, the Mulberry Street Bar (formerly Mare
Chiaro), founded in 1908, has been featured in several films.
Johnny Depp met Al Pacino there in Donny Brasco, and it was
also featured in The Pope of Greenwich Village, 9 1/2 Weeks,
The Godfather III, and several other movies.
The directors of these films came to the bar to find the
“social club” ambiance and atmosphere found in
the Little
Italy of yore. The name of the bar changed with a shift in
management about two years ago, but the jukebox still croons
with Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra, and movies in the making
will always be drawn to this storied
spot in Little Italy. |
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| By
Sabbia Auriti, Ph.D, Editor
In 1855, only 28 percent of the residents living in the
Five Points neighborhood of New York City were nativeborn
Americans, and three percent were Italian-born, living mainly
on Anthony and Orange Streets. Between 1860 and 1880, 68,500
Italians moved to New
York, settling in the same area. For those unfamiliar with
the area, the Five Points was New York’s original and
most notorious slum. Located at the southwest
corner of what is now Columbus Park – a few blocks
below Canal at Baxter Street –the district teemed with
gangs, prostitutes, criminals, and street urchins.
In the early part of the 19th century a number of Northern
Italian political and religious refugees, among them Lorenzo
da Ponte (Mozart’s librettist), arrived in New York
seeking freedoms that they could not enjoy in Italy.
Among other celebrated Italian immigrants was
Giuseppe Garibaldi, the great Italian liberator who immigrated
to New York in 1850 after the collapse of the Roman Republic.
In Little Italy, a “national” holiday
was celebrated every year on September 20, the date commemorating
Garibaldi’s triumphal march into Rome, securing the
capitulation of the Vatican Territory and the unification
of Italy.
The Little Italy community also celebrated Giuseppe Mazzini,
another important voice of the Italian
Risorgimento.
In the second half of the 19th century, NYC’s Italian
immigration reached its peak, with several Italian parishes
and Italianlanguage newspapers.
Although 20 to 30 percent of these migrants returned to Italy,
having come here only to work, the greater part settled permanently,
prompted by overpopulation
and an unstable economy in Italy. Most immigrants chose to
settle in the many large cities along the East Coast of the
United States. Many of them were unskilled laborers, unable
to speak neither English nor the formal Italian (many spoke
only their regional dialect), and thus the industrial East
was an
inevitable attraction.
The 1900 census showed that 225,000 Italians lived in New
York City alone. By 1904, 575,000 Italians lived in the city.
To reach the land where “streets were paved with gold,”
Italians left from the ports of Genoa, Naples, or Palermo.
In 1921, a first class ticket on the ship “La
Veloce,” cost 220 dollars – a third class ticket
sold for 95 dollars.
As the immigrants moved towards downtown Manhattan, hometown
loyalties divided Little Italy into region-specific neighborhoods.
The Northern Italians settled along Bleecker Street, while
the Genoese
claimed Baxter Street. Those from Western Sicily grouped themselves
together along Elizabeth Street. Mulberry Street largely housed
immigrants from Naples. Throughout the first quarter of the
20th century, immigration statistics show a steady flow of
new immigrant arrivals. However, the immigration quota laws
of 1924 restricted the annual importation of Italian immigrants
into the United States and the neighborhood gradually began
to see the effects of the restrictive quotas.
Today only a few thousand Italian Americans call Little
Italy home. As the second and third generations of Italian
Americans became acculturated, they moved to “the country,”
in sufficient amount to form Little Italy neighborhoods in
Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. But visitors
continue to flock to the area
to take in a little edible Old World charm.
As Little Italy gradually shrank, large portions of the
neighborhood were absorbed by Chinatown, as immigrants from
China and other Eastern Countries moved to the area. The northern
reaches of Little
Italy, near Hudson Street, have ceased to be recognizably
Italian and are known today as NoLita,
an abbreviation for “North of Little Italy.” Today,
the Italian spirit remains strong in Little Italy, as the
section of Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Streets
line with Italian restaurants remains distinctly
recognizable as Little Italy.
Be sure to have a cappuccino at Angelo’s or enjoy a
delicious pastry at Cha Cha’s! This is the first installment
of The Italian Tribune’s new series on the preservation
of the history and culture of New York City’s Little
Italy. |
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HISTORIC MULBERRY BEND in New York City’s Old
Little Italy was not only the neighborhood’s
main thoroughfare, but also served as the heart of
the area as a makeshift market, playground, social
gathering place, and political arena.
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THE ORIGINAL ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL,
left, was built in 1815 at 260 Mulberry Street, where
it still stands today. It is the oldest Roman Catholic
Church building in New York City.
BEFORE THE MASSES OF ITALIAN immigrants settled in
the Five Points area of New York City, later to be known
as Little Italy, Mulberry Bend was an open, undeveloped
part of the city. |
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By Sabbia Auriti,
Ph.D
Editor
St. Januarius, or San Gennaro, is the patron
saint of Naples. According to legend, he was the Bishop of Benevento,
a southern Italian town that flourished towards the end of the third
century. He died a martyr in 305 AD, during the Christian persecution
ordered by Emperor Diocletian.
Gennaro’s destiny was sealed when the then-Prelate went to
visit the Deacons Sosso and Proculo, who had been thrown in jail
with Eutichete and Acuzio because they were Christian. The Romans
suspected that Gennaro must be a Christian as well, and thus he
was put to death. The Proconsul Timothy had Gennaro arrested and
subjected to various forms of torture. First he was thrown into
a furnace, but he came through unscathed. The torture continued
and finally Gennaro was beheaded. Legend affirms that the saint’s
bloody head and body were wrapped up by an old man and a woman.
As the woman cleansed his body before burial, she filled a vial
with his blood.
Every year on the first Sunday in May (the day his relics were transferred
into the church, and on September 19 (the anniversary of his martyrdom),
thousands of people gather in Naples to witness the miraculous event:
the recurring miracle of the liquefaction of his blood.
The blood of San Gennaro is kept in two glass vials of different
shapes and sizes. Both vials are sealed and closed in a metal case
that allows it to be viewed. The blood in the larger vial reaches
the halfway mark, while in the smaller container only a few drops
seem to adhere to the bottom. The blood, which is normally solidified
and is dark in color, becomes liquid and reddish, sometimes frothing,
bubbling up and increasing in volume on the designated dates.
Folklore explains that the miracle happened for the first time about
four decades after Gennaro’s death, when his relics were being
moved to the catacombs of Naples. Accompanying the procession that
day was Eusebia, the woman who had gathered his blood on the day
of his execution. She carried the vial along the march. Suddenly
the dark solidified mass became a vivid red color.
Since then, the “miracle of the blood” as it is called,
has generated periodical controversy and heated discussions. Although
the Church and members of scientific communities have tried to justify
the occurrence, so far no one has come up with any clue that would
justify the miracle. No one knows for sure how this liquefaction
takes place at certain times.
Thus, San Gennaro, patron saint and protector of Naples, represents
for many a symbol of the city, and his festival is one of the most
passionately celebrated in all Italy. Ideally, the celebrations
should culminate with the miracle of the liquefaction of the saint’s
blood, but it is difficult to predict with accuracy if the miracle
will be repeated exactly on the designated day. Apparently it is
an omen of bad fortune if the miracle fails to manifest: a series
of disasters is said to be linked to the years that liquefaction
did not occur.
Although San Gennaro remains the main saint that the Neapolitans
love and pray to, the liquefaction of blood is not uncommon among
saints. In fact, Naples alone is awash in so many blood relics that
the 17th century French writer Jean Jacques Bouchard once dubbed
it “Urbis Sanguinum” (“City of Bloods”).
And many of these liquefied.
For example, a specimen from St. Aloyisus
Gonzaga in the Chiesa del Gesù Vecchio (Church of the Old
Jesus) used to vivify every June 21. For an unknown reason, the
miracle stopped – it was last observed by Dr. G.B. Alfano,
an historian of blood relics, in 1950. A vial attributed to St.
Lawrence, located in San Lorenzo Maggiore, on the other hand, is
now permanently fluid. The Church of San Gregorio Armeno holds the
greatest supply of blood vials – one from each John the Baptist,
St. Pantaleone, and St. Patricia. John’s has now ceased and
Pantaleone’s stopped in 1950.
If you are planning a trip to Naples and want to fully understand
the impact that St. Januarius has on the “partenopei”
(Neapolitans), there are several stops to make. In addition to visiting
“Gennà” (the dialect version of the saint’s
name and the way many Neapolitans affectionately refer to him) in
his cathedral, you should visit the recently opened Museum of the
Treasures of San Gennaro. It is situated on the premises of the
Duomo, the Naples Cathedral. Here, a great number of gifts dedicated
to the saint ex voto are on display. They represent a form of “thanks”
from those who have been blessed for “grazia ricevuta”
(“grace received”). |
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The Feast of San Gennaro
is celebrated annually
in New York's Little Italy just as it's celebrated
traditionally in Naples with good food and good times
with friends and family |
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THE PATRON SAINT OF
NAPLES, San Gennaro
is also loved by Italian communities around
the world, especially in New York City -
home to thousands of Neapolitan transplants |
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The museum, which took eight years to plan and
seven months to set up, occupies two floors. Its entrance is just
to the right of the main entrance to the cathedral at the end of the
portico walkway of the adjacent building. Inside the museum, 25 illuminated
display cases contain the vast array of precious objects that people
form all over the world sent to Naples’ patron saint.
Each richly decorated, engraved, and etched are lined bronze busts
of the saint, crucifixes, chalices, the ostensory (the receptacle
in which the Host is displayed to the congregation), and other religious
items. Many of the precious objects are from the late 1600s, one is
from the Angevin 1300s, and some as recent as the 20th century.
If you are a history buff, on Via di Capodimonte 13, you will find
the entrance to the “Catacombe di S. Gennaro,” a two-story
cemetery dating from the second century and filled with frescoes and
mosaics. These hidden and wide tunnels lined with early Christian
burial niches have become a pilgrimage site, since the bones of San
Gennaro were transferred there in the fifth century. The cemetery
remained active until the eleventh century, although the bones have
been blessed and moved to the lower levels closed to the public.
San Gennaro has successfully made a name for himself internationally
as well, from Hollywood to Las Vegas to Naples, Florida, and of course,
to the streets of New York’s Little Italy. In downtown Manhattan,
the San Gennaro Feast marks the end of the summer and the last of
the annual major street festivals.
The first American Feast of San Gennaro was held on Mulberry Street,
New York on September 18, 1926, by newly-arrived Neapolitan immigrants
who wanted to retain their observance from their home country. Through
the years the celebrations have expanded, and what was once a one-day
religious observance is now an 11-day street fair. For the occasion,
the area around Mulberry Street in Little Italy, Manhattan, is closed
to traffic. The festival includes parades, typical Italian fare, and
a candlelit procession which begins immediately after a celebratory
Mass at the Church of the Most Precious Blood.
The 79th annual feast will run from September 14 through the 24. |
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Editor’s
Note:
This story is the first of a brief two-part survey of 19thCentury
Italian American writers. Writers of
Historic Little Italy
By Dr. Emelise Aleandri
Before the mass migration of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, Manhattan’s Little Italy was called
“Five Points.”
The first Italian American immigrant writer in the neighborhood
was ex-priest Abbe Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), born in Ceneda,
Italy. He was, in his peripatetic lifetime, Poet of the Austrian
court and librettist for Mozart and Salieri. Fleeing political and
religious pressures, he arrived in 1805, settled on Bayard Street
and the Bowery, and ran a grocery. Appointed the first Professor
of Italian at Columbia College in 1825, he was an indefatigable
promoter of Italian culture, turning his successive homes into Italian
cultural centers. In teaching, he adapted his earlier plays for
his 24 American students, “modest and estimable young ladies,”
to perform. “L’Ape Musicale” (“The Musical
Bee”), arranged for his niece Giulia’s New York City
debut in 1830, was a revue first produced in Vienna, but its topical
European satire eluded New York audiences.
Da Ponte expended energy and money promoting Italian opera in the
city, first importing the G.B. (Giovan Battista) Montresor Opera
Company, and then raising funds for an opera house. The failure
of these enterprises was a great disappointment, so Da Ponte recounted
the entire frustrating experience in a humorous poem, “Lezione
d’un poeta filantropo” (“Lesson of a Philanthropic
Poet”) and in a pamphlet, addressed “Signori Americani”
(“American Gentlemen”). In 1834 Da Ponte, perceiving
increased interest in Italian, published his tragedy, Il Mezenzio,
co-written in Italy with his brother Luigi. He wrote lyrics for
“America,” a song composed by Maestro Antonio Bagioli
(1795-1871).
Da Ponte labeled himself “Il creator della lingua Italiana
in America” (“Creator of the Italian language in America”).
But Anthony Fiva, who taught in his New Dutch Church Street home
in 1773, had preceded him as the first teacher of Italian in New
York City. Da Ponte died in 1838 at his 91 Spring Street residence
and left his extensive Memoirs.
When the Montresor Company departed, Da Ponte’s friend Antonio
Bagioli from Bologna became a wealthy voice teacher in New York.
Bagioli’s New Method of Singing was published in
1839, the year he resided at 91 Spring Street at the corner of Broadway,
Da Ponte’s last residence. From 1840 until his death in 1871,
Bagioli was listed as a “Professor of Music” at 322
Broome Street, 119 Mercer Street, 540 Broadway, and 92 Prince Street.
Bagioli published One Hour of Daily Study for the Acquirement
of a Correct Pronunciation of the Vowels, which is the only Method
to become a Perfect Vocalist in 1864.
Carbonista and Italian political exile Piero Maroncelli (1795-1846)
was born in Forli. Incarcerated for 12 years in Spielberg Prison
in Austria, he lost a leg. He and his wife Amalia arrived in New
York with Rivafinoli’s opera company in 1830. In Spielberg,
Maroncelli wrote the poems “Psalm of Life,” “Psalm
of the Dawn,” and “Winds of the Wakened Spring,”
translated by New York poet Fitz-Greene Halleck. In 1833 Maroncelli
published, Addizioni alle “Mie Prigioni” di Silvio
Pellico (“Additions to the ‘My Prisons’ by
Silvio Pellico). He also wrote “The Discourses and Letters
of Louis Cornaro on a Sober and Temperate Life” and “Essay
on the Classic and Romantic Schools,” c. 1842.
Violinist Carlo Bassini arrived around 1839 and wrote The Art
of Singing: An Analytical, Physiological and Practical System for
the Cultivation of the Voice (1857); Education of the Young
Voice, published by F. J. Huntington of 434 Broome Street;
and Bassini’s New Method for Soprano and Mezzo-Soprano
(1865) published in Boston. Bassini provided music criticism for
the newspaper L’Eco d’Italia, published by
Giovanni Francesco Secchi de Casali (1819-1885), President of the
Grande Unione Italiana negli Stati Uniti d’America. Secchi
de Casali swore an affidavit on behalf of Antonio Meucci’s
telephone patent suit against Alexander Graham Bell.
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Joseph (Giuseppe) Rocchietti (c. 1797-1879)
is the first Italian immigrant playwright in New York City,
for his Ifigenia (1842), the first extant Italian American
play. Rocchietti was born in Casale Monferrato, Piemonte, c.
1797. After involvement in the 1821 Italian Carbonari uprisings
to further the ideals of liberty, democracy, and republicanism,
Rocchietti emigrated c. 1831, finally arriving in the United
States. In Virginia, Brooks and Conrad published his Lorenzo
e Oonalaska (1835), the first Italian American novel. In
1842 his address was 400 Broadway near Canal Street. By 1844,
Doggett’s Directory listed him at 663 Broadway
at Bleecker Street as an Italian professor.
In Ifigenia, a classical tragedy dedicated “To
My American Scholars,” Rocchietti recommends to his students
open mindedness about other nationalities and avoidance of “blind
Patriotism.” He rails against narrow minded Nativist political
activity in New York and their persecution of Irish Catholics.
This theme also dominates his ars poetica: “Why
a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of
North America” (1845). Edgar Allan Poe’s lukewarm
assessment in his Broadway Journal was based on Rocchietti’s
awkward English and his moral, political agenda.
Rocchietti dedicated his English language play, Charles
Rovellini: A Drama of the Disunited States of North America
(c. 1860) to the “Spirits of my Dear Sons John and Charles,”
both killed in the Civil War. The Preface, written for its 1875
publication, is a rhetorical debate on critical social issues
– politics, religion, a free press, Presidents Grant and
Lincoln, taxes, the philandering Henry Ward Beecher, and King
Vittorio Emmanuele II – and establishes the pro-South
position of both the writer and chief protagonist, Charles Rovellini.
This play was not intended for students of Italian, but for
teachers, preachers, legislators, and the “Honest, suffering
citizens of America.” The example Rocchietti set for future
writers would not be replicated until the emergence of another
writer of social conscience c. 1900, Alessandro Sisca (1875-1940),
alias Riccardo Cordiferro. Other playwrights emerging after
the mass migration write an entirely different story.
Stephen Ferrero, of the Montresor Company, ran a dance academy
at 21 Howard Street in 1850, managed by his son Edward at 17
Ludlow Street in 1852. When exile Giuseppe Garibaldi arrived
in America in July 1850 after his failed attempt to defend the
Roman Republic, he recuperated from rheumatism at Stephen Ferrero’s
home on Valley Street in Hastings on Hudson, New York.
Edward, a Civil War Major General in the Italian Legion, taught
dancing at West Point and published The Art of Dancing,
Historically Illustrated, to which is added a few Hints on Etiquette;
also, the Figures, Music and Necessary Instruction (1859)
in New York. Exile Filippo Manetta arrived in America c. 1851
and was Director of the newspaper Il Proscritto. He wrote libretti
for the opera, Omano, never staged, and Luigi Arditi’s
opera produced at the Academy of Music in 1856, La Spia,
from William Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Spy.
Arditi published an autobiography, My Reminiscences (1896).
For this continuing survey, the author in indebted to many
writers and scholars, all of whom are credited in her latest
book, The Italian-American Immigrant Theatre of New York
City: 1746-1899, published by the Edwin Mellen Press (2006).
Next installment: “Ciambelli, Cordiferro and Tony
Pastor.” |
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| By Dr. Emelise Aleandri
Editor’s Note:
This story is the second part of a brief two-part survey of 19th
Century Italian American writers.
The American Vaudeville houses were in the Bowery;
of that domain, Tony Pastor became the undisputed “King.”
He was born Antonio Pastore, in Brooklyn c. 1835. His Italian father
had a fruit store and barbershop. Tony became a famous songwriter/producer,
first at the American Concert Hall, 444 Broadway between Howard
and Grand Streets, later at other Bowery theatres.
Tony Pastor’s 444 Combination Songster book appeared
in 1864. In 1867, The White Crook parodied the (mostly
Italian) dancers of The Black Crook musical; A Manager’s
Trials, or, A Strike at the Opera House recreated
Italian strikes at the Academy of Music. He adapted a play from
his own novel Dare Devil Pat, Dashing Rider of the Plains.
The plays topicalities were very popular with his customers. His
parody songs caricatured prominent figures or events of the day:
“The Turkish Reveille,” “In the Bowery,”
“Dot Beautiful Hebrew Girl,” “Stereoscope Song;”
as did his melodramas, burlesques, sketches and farces.
Tony’s songs filled many books (1863-1879): Tony Pastor’s
Own Comic Vocalist, New Union Songbook, Tony Pastor’s Great
Sensation Songster, Tony Pastor’s Complete Budget of Comic
Songs, The Songs of Tony Pastor’s Opera House, Tony Pastor’s
Electric Light Songster. Did he realize the character sketch
was really a Neapolitan macchietta, half song, half comic monologue,
satirizing recognizable figures? Years later, macchiette would be
performed by Italians on Tony’s own stage.
A unifying factor in Little Italy was the Italian American press,
where businesses advertised, neighborhood social events were announced,
and events in Italy reported. One notable Italian American newspaper,
Il Progresso Italo-Americano (Italian American Progress), was
founded at 42 Elm Street by the Tuscan, Cav. Uff. Carlo Barsotti
(1850-1927) and Vincenzo Polidori in 1880, relocating to 37 Mulberry
Street by 1890. Barsotti was knighted by Italy for his newspaper
campaigns for statues of Italian heroes around town: Columbus, Verdi,
Dante, Mazzini.
Rocco Metelli, playwright and actor, wrote the play Chiara,
la Condannata a Morte (Chiara, Condemned to Death), 1887, publicizing
the plight of Chiara Cignarale, whose saga was serialized in Il
Progresso. Accused of conspiring with her lover, D’Andrea,
to shoot her husband in 1886, she was sentenced to death. D’Andrea
was acquitted. Responding to petitions, Governor David Hill commuted
her sentence to life imprisonment. In 1900, Cignarale was released
and reunited with her daughter Rosa in Italy.
Bernardino Ciambelli (1862-1931), prolific journalist, novelist
and actor/playwright who chronicled the daily life of Little Italy
in novels and newspapers, immigrated to America in 1888. From 1890-1892,
working as reporter and editor for the newspaper Cristoforo
Colombo, he lectured at Cooper Union’s rally on the Italians
lynched in New Orleans. He covered events, adapting them into sensational
novels and plays. La Figlia Maledetta (Accursed Daughter)
was produced in Philadelphia, as were his other plays in West Hoboken.
He and his wife, actress Luigia Sampietro, acted in local theatres.
Ciambelli wrote the sensational Il Processo degli Anarchici
(The Trial of the Anarchists), 1892; he adapted his famous
novel, I Misteri di Mulberry Street (The Mysteries of Mulberry
Street), 1893; into drama. His many novels of local color were
published by Francesco Frugone and Agostino Balletto: I Drammi
dell’Emigrazione (The Dramas of Emigration), 1893; La Bella
Biellese ovvero Il mistero di Columbus Avenue (The Pretty Girl from
Biella or the Mystery of Columbus Avenue), 1894; I misteri della
polizia (The Mysteries of the Police); Il delitto di Water Street
(The Crime on Water Street); I delitti dei bosses (The Crimes of
the Bosses); and Le tane di New York (The Coloreds of New York)
in 1895.
In 1894, his lighthearted farces and Pulcinella skits included:
Pulcinella Presidente Onorario (Pulcinella Honorary President);
Pulcinella Presidente Onorario (Pulcinella Honorary President),
satirizing familiar characters; and Una Sfida fra Barbieri (A Contest
between Barbers).
The end of 1894 saw his serious naturalistic
drama, I Fasci di Sicilia ossia La Rivolta della Fame (The Sicilian
Bands or the Revolt of Hunger), a revenge melodrama about the
plight of Sicilian workers. The melodramatic trappings are evident:
innocence threatened, innocence redeemed, polarities of good and
evil, tyranny of authorities, proletarian heroes, revenge, trials,
coups de theatre, working class struggle, villainy punished, virtue
rewarded, religious faith and a God-inspired universe.
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| TWO MASTERS OF THE WRITTEN WORD that
left their legacies in Little Italy in the late 19th century
are pictured here. At left is Carlo Barsotti (1850-1927), founder
of 'Il Progresso Italo-Americano.' On the right is Tony Pastor,
born Antonio Pastore, a songwriter known as the "King of
Vaudeville." |
In 1897 Ciambelli’s I misteri della
notte (The Mysteries of the Night) and Fra i pazzi (Among
the Lunatics) played in New Haven. Would that more of Ciambelli’s
works were extant, to better examine his dramatic structure.
By 1898, living at 25 King Street, Ciambelli joined Balletto,
Gardella, and Frugone on Park Row as Editor. Together they started
Il Bollettino della guerra ispano-americana (Spanish-American
War Bulletin), selling for one cent per copy. After the
war, it became Il Bollettino della Sera (Evening Bulletin).
Ciambelli provided copy, and wrote for Il Progresso Italo-Americano,
under the handle “il Reporter.”
His novel I misteri di Bleecker Street (The Mysteries of
Bleecker Street) was published in 1899. Twentieth century
novels include La Trovatella di Mulberry Street ovvero La
Stella dei Cinque Punti (The Foundling of Mulberry Street
or The Star of the Five Points, (1919). The combined
works of Bernardino Ciambelli realistically recreate identifiable
personalities, customs, language, and incidents from the period,
an intimate, unvarnished view of daily life in the Five Points/Little
Italy immigrant community that only Italian Americans truly
recognized.
Sensational dramas of mystery, murder, or exciting intrigue
belong to the genre, “dramma giallo” (“yellow
drama”), so called because of the cheap yellow paper on
which were printed popular mystery novels. Playwright Eduardo
Pecoraro, reading about murders, tragedies, and robberies in
the newspapers, would dramatize the sensational occurrences,
later reenacted in a Caffè Concerto of Little Italy,
as was the murder of Capasso, a Mulberry Street caffe proprietor.
Pecoraro wrote Jack the Ripper and the melodrama Maria
Barberi, dramatizing the real murder trial of immigrant
sweatshop worker Maria Barbella. Stalked by shoeshine man Domenico
Cataldo, she was violated and falsely promised marriage. Desperate
and frustrated, Maria took a razor to his jugular. Domenico
wound up dead in a gutter; Maria, imprisoned in the Tombs. Convicted
of murder, she was the first woman sentenced to the electric
chair. Countess Cora Slocomb di Brazza financed Maria’s
appeal. Pecoraro=s play was part of a campaign against the death
penalty, supported by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Ulysses Grant,
and Lt. Giuseppe Petrosino (1860-1909). Another trial acquitted
Maria in 1896.
Alessandro Sisca (1875-1940), prolific poet, journalist, lyricist,
publisher, lecturer, playwright, and political activist, was
concerned with the social conditions of the Italian immigrant.
A native of San Pietro in Guarano, Cosenza, his poetry was published
under the pseudonym Riccardo Cordiferro (“Heart of Iron”),
which supplanted his real name in literature and politics during
this period. Emigrating in 1892, he, his father Francisco, and
brother Marziale, founded the literary journal, La Follia,
at 202 Grand Street in 1893. The paper was read by the literati
of major Eastern Italian colonies, and the name Cordiferro became
a household word. The “Singer of the Red Muse” expounded
socialist doctrine at labor rallies, sometimes landing in jail
and attracting admirers and enemies.
Cordiferro’s early comedies were: Mbruoglie è
femmene (Feminine Intrigues), 1893; Il genio incompreso
(The Misunderstood Genius), 1894; Dio Dollaro (Mammon,
1896; and Il matrimonio in trappola (The Marriage Trap),
1897. Dramatic social verse monologues were composed in 1895:
Per la Patria e per l’onore (For the Fatherland and
for Honor) and Il Pezzente (The Beggar), describing
the plight of the impoverished. Il Pezzente, a stirring
popular naturalistic soliloquy, had minimal stage requirements
and was effectively recited at political meetings by any devout
socialist or anarchist. Da Volontario a disertore (From
Volunteer to Deserter), 1897 was his first full-length
drama, but the social drama L’Onore Perduto (Lost
Honor), 1900 was most frequently staged. He also wrote
macchiette and song lyrics, the best known being “Core
‘Ngrato” (“Ungrateful Heart”).
There were many, many more writers in historic Little Italy,
too many to consider here. Those named were among the most prominent,
and whose body of work can still be enjoyed for their insights
into a lost time. |
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