Mese Mariano - Synopsis

Synopsis

Time: 19th century

Setting: an orphanage in Naples

It is Easter Sunday and the children are playing and singing as they await the arrival of the Contessa, one of the benefactors of the orphanage. When she arrives, they serenade her as she distributes gifts to them. One of the children, Valentina, then reads a sonnet written in the Contessa's honour by Don Fabbiano. After the Contessa leaves and the children have been led to their rooms, Carmela enters the courtyard bringing a freshly baked Easter cake for her little boy and asks Suor Pazienza if she might see him. Carmela recognizes the nun as her old childhood friend. Overcome with guilt, she tells Suor Pazienza and the Mother Superior how she had been seduced and abandoned as a young girl and left with a son to bring up on her own. She eventually married a worker who refused to have the child of another man in his house and forced her to leave him in the orphanage. Carmela then goes into the chapel to pray. While she is gone some of the nuns arrive to tell the Mother Superior that Carmela's son had died in the night. The Mother Superior decides not to tell her, explaining instead that child cannot see her because he is with the choir practicing for the Mary's Month celebrations. Carmela leaves the orphanage in tears.