Garibaldi’s Hymn

Garibaldi’s Hymn is one of the songs sung collectively in a theater performance attended by Gabriele D’Annunzio and his legionnaires. Its significance in the scene lies in its place within a sequence of songs that draws the audience out of the play and into a shared public performance.

Appearance in the theater

The hymn enters after the curtain falls on the second act of a play written by Gabriele D’Annunzio. The author, watching from a proscenium box with his staff officers, breaks with the performance and calls for the audience to sing its songs. At his signal, a chorus rises from the orchestra and balconies. The sequence begins with Giovinezza, continues with Garibaldi’s Hymn, and then moves to Mameli’s Hymn.

The passage identifies Garibaldi’s Hymn by name but gives no lyrics and does not single out a particular reaction to it. Its position in the sequence is the concrete detail the scene preserves: it belongs to a succession of songs sung by a theaterful of soldiers, rather than to the play being performed.

From staged drama to collective song

The singing changes the scene’s focus from the authored work to the audience’s participation. Gabriele D’Annunzio sings from his box and is described as happy to be shedding his literature. The shift is especially pointed because it begins with the playwright himself protesting against his own play: the audience’s singing displaces the formal performance with a collective one.

That transition does not end with Garibaldi’s Hymn. The soldiers next call for ’A tazza ’e cafè, a popular Neapolitan song. The officers exchange embarrassed looks, while the troops insist on their choice; the song then rises without accompaniment, growing from a light beginning into a forceful chorus. The contrast distinguishes the named hymns from the popular tune that follows, while showing how the soldiers’ own preferences take over the theater.

Song and public identity

Elsewhere, the narrative presents singing as part of politically divided public life. During a socialist procession in Milan, women at the head of the march carry a portrait of Lenin and a red flag while singing songs of liberation. In the theater, by contrast, the singing takes place among D’Annunzio’s legionnaires, following his signal. These scenes do not establish that the songs are equivalent; together, they show how collective singing accompanies distinct groups and settings.

Garibaldi’s Hymn therefore has a brief but specific place in the book’s account of political performance. It is named as part of a sequence that turns a literary occasion into collective participation. The evidence does not attribute lyrics, a separate response, or a later recurrence to the hymn, so its meaning remains grounded in that scene and its position within the chorus.