’A tazza ’e cafè

’A tazza ’e cafè is a popular Neapolitan song whose performance in the Teatro Verdi becomes a turning point in a scene of collective singing. When the soldiers call for it after the formal anthems, their unaccompanied chorus overwhelms the theater’s official pageantry and leaves Gabriele D’Annunzio listening rather than singing. The episode gives a familiar café tune unusual political weight: the people make their own music audible, and the poet appears to recognize that it is not his to direct.

The song and its setting

The book identifies ’A tazza ’e cafè as a popular Neapolitan tune, a seemingly slight song heard in cafés and associated with a glittering, imaginary life. Its arrival follows a more ceremonious sequence: at D’Annunzio’s signal, the audience has sung Giovinezza, Garibaldi’s Hymn, and Mameli’s Hymn. The soldiers then ask for their own songs, and this tune answers that request with a different kind of music.

The scene takes place in the Teatro Verdi, where D’Annunzio’s literary performance is already giving way to communal celebration. The tune does not enter as an authored political declaration. It begins at the soldiers’ insistence, without instrumental accompaniment, and grows from a lightly spirited chorus into a forceful collective sound. Its contrast with the official songs is central: the little café song displaces their ceremonial grandeur through the sheer presence of the voices singing it.

A chorus that changes the scene

The officers first exchange embarrassed looks as the troops insist on the request. Once the singing starts, however, even the officers find it amusing. The chorus gathers strength, and the song’s unpolished gaiety comes to dominate the theater. The change is both musical and social: a tune associated with ordinary popular life takes command of a venue and occasion shaped by D’Annunzio’s authority.

D’Annunzio stops singing and turns pale. The narrative presents the moment as recognition: the people are teaching him their song. It does not spell out everything he understands, but the shift in his response marks a limit to the poet’s ability to stage-manage the crowd. He had helped summon the singing; now the soldiers’ choice, and the sound they make together, exceed his direction.

Popular music and political community

The episode resonates with the Carnaro Charter’s provision that workers’ associations could establish their own music, songs, ceremonies, and rites. The scene makes that principle concrete not through a formal declaration but through a song chosen and carried by the soldiers. Their chorus briefly turns the theater into a shared space in which collective participation, rather than the leader’s literary design, sets the tone.

The song’s significance lies in this reversal, not in any stated political message within its lyrics. A tune linked to café life overtakes official hymns, and the contrast exposes the distance between the Republic’s planned civic forms and the spontaneous culture of its participants. In the book’s account, ’A tazza ’e cafè is therefore more than a musical interlude: it is the sound of a public claiming its own expression, and of D’Annunzio recognizing that claim.