L'Orfeide

However, according to Waterhouse (1999), Malpiero's correspondence indicates that he had originally conceived Sette Canzoni as a stand-alone work, rather than as the central panel of a triptych.

[3] Sette Canzoni premiered at the Palais Garnier in Paris on 10 July 1920 in French translation by Henry Prunières as Sept chansons, conducted by Gabriel Grovlez.

The strangeness of its music and dramatic structure and its deliberate break with the verismo style popular at the time caused an uproar at the premiere which nearly drowned out the performance.

[4] In 1919, Malipiero started composing Orfeo, ovvero L'ottava canzone, which was to become Part III, and finished it shortly before the premiere of Sette canzoni.

[5] Later complete performances of the work included its Italian premiere at La Fenice in Venice (1936) and the Teatro della Pergola in Florence (1966).

[6] It premiered in the United States in 1925 in a concert performance organized by the League of Composers at the Forty-Eighth Street Theatre in New York City.

The performance is interrupted when a man dressed in red, wearing a frightening mask and brandishing a whip, bursts in and scatters the players.

Another friar, impatient to lock up the church for the night, interrupts a woman in prayer by rattling his keys and ultimately tapping her on the shoulder and pointing to the door.

Malpiero recalls passing by a house at the foot of Monte Grappa outside Venice, where he used to hear an old woman weeping, screaming, singing lullabies, and cradling a doll.

Roles: La vecchia madre (the old mother), (soprano); young passers-by (chorus); her son (mimed) 4.

Il campanaro (The bellringer) – As a man rings the church bells to warn the townspeople of a terrible fire, he sings a ribald song, seemingly indifferent to the impending disaster.

L'alba delle ceneri (The dawn of Ash Wednesday) – In a small town, a lamplighter extinguishes the street lamps as a funeral carriage passes by accompanied by penitents calling people to prayer.

Malipiero wrote that this scene reflects the relief he always felt when Ash Wednesday liberated him from the "invasive banality" of the carnival season.

It is a bloodthirsty tale of ancient Rome sung by marionettes and involving Emperor Nero, his mother Agrippina, and an executioner.

Two other audiences are shown in separate areas of the stage, each in their own theatre – reactionary old men and their female companions in a luxurious baroque theatre who are indignant and outraged by the spectacle and a group of rowdy boys sitting on plain benches who thoroughly applaud the violence and demand more.

He congratulates the aristocrats on their passivity and then begins to sing, "Uscite o gemiti, accenti queruli, lamenti flebili..." ("Begone o groans, querelous words, languid laments...").

Hermann Scherchen conducted the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra with a cast that included Magda Olivero and Renato Capecchi.