"A vucchella" is a Neapolitan song composed by

Paolo Tosti Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti Royal Victorian Order, KCVO (9 April 1846, Ortona, Abruzzo2 December 1916, Rome) was an Italian composer and music teacher. Today, he is remembered mostly for his light-hearted songs, which are popular among vocal stu ...

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

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

, but from

Pescara Pescara (; ; ) is the capital city of the province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo Regions of Italy, region of Italy. It is the most populated city in Abruzzo, with 118,657 (January 1, 2023) residents (and approximately 350,000 including the surround ...

, a city in the region of

Abruzzo Abruzzo (, ; ; , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; ), historically also known as Abruzzi, is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy with an area of 10,763 square km (4,156 sq mi) and a population of 1.3 million. It is divided into four ...

. 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".Erminia Passannanti, "Libido e contemplazione erotica nel testo "La vucchella", di Gabriele D'Annunzio e Paolo Tosti.", Erodiade, 2014. 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 that uses a term for a part of something to refer to the whole (''pars pro toto''), or vice versa (''totum pro parte''). The term is derived . Common English synecdoches include '' ...

– 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 Compositions by Paolo Tosti Neapolitan songs Works by Gabriele D'Annunzio