"A vucchella" is a

Neapolitan song Canzone napoletana (), sometimes referred to as Neapolitan song ( nap, canzona napulitana ), is a generic term for a traditional form of music sung in the Neapolitan language, ordinarily for the male voice singing solo, although well represented ...

composed by

Paolo Tosti Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti KCVO (9 April 1846, Ortona, Abruzzo2 December 1916, Rome) was an Italian composer and music teacher. Life Francesco Paolo Tosti received most of his music education in his native Ortona, Italy, as well as the cons ...

. The poet who wrote the words of this song was the 19th century lyric poet, Gabriele D'Annunzio. He was not from

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, but from a city in the region of

Abruzzo Abruzzo (, , ; nap, label=Neapolitan language, Abruzzese Neapolitan, Abbrùzze , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; nap, label=Sabino dialect, Aquilano, Abbrùzzu; #History, historically Abruzzi) is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy wi ...

. With the Neapolitan melodic song tradition being so popular worldwide, D'Annunzio wanted to prove himself able to write in the Neapolitan dialect, and managed to do so quite convincingly for this song, "La vucchella". One interpretation is that the woman's mouth is like a little rose's petal when it becomes a bit dried out and battered in the cold weather. The poet has turned his gaze on the woman's face and focussed on the woman's mouth, specifically. "A vucchella" is thus a

synecdoche Synecdoche ( ) is a type of metonymy: it is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole (''pars pro toto''), or vice versa (''totum pro parte''). The term comes from Greek . Examples in common Engl ...

– the part for the whole. D'Annunzio was known as a lover of women of all ages, so one cannot exclude the possibility that the woman in question, whose rose-like dried mouth the poet was writing about, was in her late forties or even older. The text does not belong to the old Seventeenth/Eighteenth century Neapolitan lyric tradition, and was specially written for Tosti by Gabriele D'Annunzio in the first half of the 1900s.Italy: documents and notes – Volume 15 – Page 456 Italy. Servizi delle informazioni e della proprietà letteraria, artistica e scientifica – 1967 "Even Gabriele D'Annunzio was attracted by this style and wrote A 'vucchella for Tosti's music, the leaping, fresh verses ... "

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:'A vucchella Neapolitan songs Works by Gabriele D'Annunzio