Aug. 26 – A singer and actress at Naples’ variety theater at the beginning of the twentieth century, she gave birth to small and great divas. Performer of great hits like “‘A meglia voce”, “‘O paese d’o sole”, “Malafemmena,” Gilda Mignonette was intriguing, mischievous and a seductive femme fatale who has gone down in history as the “Queen of the emigrants.” She introduced America to the most beautiful Neapolitan songs, quickly becoming an unforgettable icon of Italian and Neapolitan culture. And today the myth lives on with the show “Gilda Mignonette – The Queen of the emigrants” starring Marta Bifano, an actress, who took her first steps in television and movies in the hit film starring and directed by Massimo Troisi, “Ricomincio da Tre.” After the première in Umbria at the “Todi Festival 2013,” the play centered on the versatile and passionate figure of the heroine of Italian emigration, “Gilda Mignonette” will by in the US starting in December. First in New York, then Washington, the international tour was made possible thanks to the support of the Province of Naples and of Asmef, the South Future Development Association. Mignonette was a popular singer and a singular phenomenon: her career took place mainly in the United States, where she arrived in 1924 and where she became idolized as the voice of the Neapolitan song par excellence, able to bring in a foreign land passions and feelings never forgotten. A legendary figure (she died on the steamer that was bringing her back to Naples), Mignonette was an artist of great temperament, with a style described as “tragic and sharp as a razor’s blade.” Likened to Édith Piaf, a great interpreter of the French realist vein, she has become an icon, a symbol of Little Italy.
