Bella ciao is an Italian revolt song that celebrates the engagement in the fight led by partisan,
resistance fighters during World War II against German troops allied to the fascist Italian Social
Republic, in the context of the Italian Civil War. The lyrics were written at the end of 1944 to the
music of a popular song sung at the beginning of the twentieth century by mondine, those
seasonal workers who weeded the rice fields of the Po plain and transplanted rice, to denounce
their working conditions. This song has become a hymn to resistance around the world.
Summary
1 story
1.1 A confused origin
1.2 Recent history
1.3 Versions
1.3.1 Original version of mondine (by Giovanna Daffini) [13]
1.3.2 Version of the 1952 mondine by Vasco Scansani
1.3.3 Adapted fan version
2 Interpretations
3 In the media
3.1 In the cinema
3.2 On television
3.3 video game
4 Notes and references
5 Appendices
5.1 Bibliography
5.2 Related articles
5.3 External links
Story
A confused origin
The lyrics of the version that refers to the oldest events were fixed in 1944 by Vasco Scansani, a
rice field weeder from Gualtieri1. These words celebrate the victory of the social struggle which
led in 1908 to the establishment of a law limiting the daily working time to eight hours2. “Ciao,
Bella! »Is a salute to the mondina according to the law, or a farewell to the one before, this
agricultural worker who was obliged to work without limits in the rice fields of the Padane plain
and was chosen by the author as a symbol of the condition of the politicized proletariat in
northern Italy.
This version would take up a folk song from the Vercelli region transcribed in 19063. Alla mattina
appena alzata is derived from a French ballad of the fifteenth century4 in which different
regions, at the end of the nineteenth5, each developed a specific version, La daré d'côla
môntagna in Piedmont, Il fiore di Teresina in Trentino, Stamattina mi sono alzata in Veneto4.
The refrain "Bella ciao" ("My beautiful, hi!") Is in Italian with an unusual syntax but can also be
read with another punctuation: O Bella, ciao bella, ciao Bella, ciao ciao ciao. It's a play on words
on the double meaning of Ciao, hello in the sense of hello as in the sense of goodbye, taken
from a song from Lombardy, which the ethnomusicologist Roberto Leydi will collect belatedly,
La me nona l'è vecchierella (My grandmother is an old woman). A girl denounces the water
chore there: "La me fa ciau, La me fa ciau, La me fa ciau ciau ciau ..." She says "Hi!" », She said to
me« Hi! », She makes me« Hi! Salvation ! Salvation ! »And sends me to the fountain5
video icon External video
Comparison of Koilen and Bella, ciao! [archive].
The origin of the melody remains undetermined. It is possible that it was proposed, whether in
1908 or later, by an emigrant who returned, for example during the Great War, from the United
States6 where similar music would have been played previously by Ashkenazi immigrants. , an
anonymous. Indeed, it is on a partially very similar melody, which is perhaps only a coincidence,
that in October 1919 Mishka Ziganoff (it), Gypsy and Christian accordionist from Odessa who
became a restaurateur in New York. , recorded in this city a klezmer song called Koilen. It is a
version of a Yiddish song, Dus Zekele Koilen6, "The Little Bag of Coal" (Das Säckele Kohlen). It
was recorded again, under this title, in 1923 by Abraham Moskowitz and in 1922 by Morris
Goldstein6.
Recent history
Stamattina mi sono alzata,
Stamattina mi sono alzata,
Sono alzata - iolìou
Sono alzata - iolàou
Sono alzata prima del sol.
Sono andata alla finestra
E ho visto il mio primo amor
Che parlava a un'altra ragazza,
Discorreva di far amor.
Sono andata a confessarmi
E l'ho detto al confessor.
Penitenza che lui m'ha dato:
Di lasciare il mio primo amor.
My piuttosto che lasciarlo
His content was mì a morir.
Farem fare la cassa fonda
E andremo dentro in tri:
Prima il padre e poi la madre
E il mio amore in braccio a mi,
E il mio amore in braccio a mi.
Grave flower.
Before World War II, a certain version of the song of the mondine was sung at banquets, among
others by Giovanna Daffini, daughter of a traveling violinist who learned it from her
grandmother and sang it when she was working, from the age of 13, in 1926, in the rice fields of
Vercelli and Pavie. Installed in 1932 in Gualtieri, in Emilie, she then sings like an aède in
weddings, accompanied by her guitar and her husband's violin7, an anarchist repertoire. During
the war, she joined the Resistance.
The melody, which has never been recorded in Italy, is known to a few resistance fighters of the
Gappist units in the region of Modena and Bologna in the Emilian Apennines, such as the
fighters of the Russian section of the Allied battalion who are supervised by
