Musica proibita

Stanislao Gastaldon published Musica proibita as his opus 5 in 1881, when he was twenty, and signed the words with the pseudonym Flick-Flock; they are his own. The song is sung by a woman recalling a serenade her mother has forbidden her to listen to, and the melody of that forbidden serenade is quoted inside the song itself. It was taken up by tenors rather than sopranos almost immediately, and Beniamino Gigli and later Luciano Pavarotti kept it in their recital programmes. Gastaldon's operas disappeared; this piece did not.