Anna Coraggio’s life story resurfaces seventy years after she ended her recording and stage career and returned to private life, surrounded by her siblings, her nephews and nieces, her spouse and their numerous friends whom they loved hosting at their Brooklyn brownstone. Hers is a multilayered tale of familiar comfort sacrificed by generations for love, for duty, for art, for family values, for what makes us humans in short. Giulio Breviario, her brother-in-law found himself a soldier fighting in North-Africa* during WWII while distrusting the Mussolini regime. He aspired to the American dream and found the way to make it come true. Anna and her family inspire the narration, not because of what remains of her musical contributions, but because they embodied the principles that we share as humans. Our shared humanity explains not only that very different individuals and generations collaborated to realize the podcast but that so many also passionately study and share the knowledge that helps understand Anna Coraggio’s music. We relied on their contributions to make this episode, and we particularly thank Patrick O’Boyle and John Viola of The Italian American Podcast and Jeff Matthews of Naples: Life Death and Miracles for their discussion and definition of the sceneggiata napoletana. The podcast also benefited from Joseph Sciorra’s generosity. He made time to discuss and share in person, at the Calandra Italian American Institute, his knowledge of the Italian and Italian-American music traditions of Naples, of Campania and their evolution in the New York environment of Little Italy.
Paul Fadoul
*Giulio Breviario served in North-Africa where U.S soldiers captured him and transferred him to Fort Hamilton as a prisoner of war (Correction to podcast content requested by Alex Breviario).
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