Premiere recorded at the Brooklyn Public Library, October 2022

Commissioned by the Five Borough Music Festival and On Site Opera

Gitanjali Mathur, soprano
Cecilia Duarte, mezzo-soprano
Pala Garcia, violin
John Popham, cello

14′

PROGRAM NOTE

Serafina Pattelli (my Nana Sophie) was born in 1931 to a large Italian family originally from Bari and lived a varied life full of relatives and card games accompanied by her amazing meatballs and “gravy” (not “sauce”). One of 15 children raised in Brooklyn, one by one the surviving siblings crossed the Verrazzano bridge to live out their days in Staten Island. Nana fell in her kitchen one day, making it no longer possible for her to live alone and she was admitted to Clove Lakes Rehabilitation Center, where she later died of Covid (like many residents). Everything in the song text is absolutely true…and we miss her. The piece opens with a conversation between Nana and my son Ethan while playing cards when he was very young, which we often did when we visited.

TEXT

words and music by Jessica Meyer

Nana Sophie never said a bad word about anyone.
“Whatever floats your boat”, she’d say.
Her meatballs and gravy were simply the best.

She was one of 15 children
living on Dean St. in Brooklyn.
The sisters slept 3 to bed,
and they could not wait for a certain sister to get married
because of nighttime accidents.

Not everyone survived,
not even her fiancé who died during the war.
She became a seamstress, then somebody’s longtime mistress…
and that somebody was Papa Joe.

One by one they crossed the bridge to Staten Island
and bought houses, sometimes on the same block.
There was always a card game going on.
Wild turkeys still roam the streets around the corner by the hospital,
and ocean breezes waft through every yard.

Sandy tore through and sent the waves over every house except hers.
Somehow, she was spared,
but Covid at Clove Lakes finally took her – and so many others.

After every story, she’d say:
“That’s it, that’s all.”

Her meatballs and gravy…the best.