il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze

“Look, when they tell me that in my music, I am mainly concerned with bringing together a little nostalgia and a lot of good humor and optimism, well, I think that’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered: with a bit of nostalgia, lots of optimism, and good humor.” If we listened to enough of his music (and not just the film music), Nino Rota’s wish might well come true, not least when listening to the third of his ten operas, the snappy Florentine Straw Hat (Il cappello di paglia di Firenze). This is his most popular stage work, which Rota wrote in Bari following the end of World War II and orchestrated a decade later for its premiere in Palermo.

Nearly a century ago, in 1914, Charlie Chaplin invented his tramp character. Not long before that date, in 1908, the celebrated Italian writer Luigi Pirandello had published an essay entitled L’umorismo (“humour”), referring to a quality that is something rather more than comedy: by way of laughter the contradictions of real life and the truth behind the mask are revealed. Ours is an age of humour, but it is also an age that has seen a renewed awareness of musical theatre, a time when the genre is being re-interpreted in the light of an increasingly complex and sophisticated exploration of the reasons behind it.