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Bada Bing! Bada Boom!

Paul Maisano came up with the idea of Bada Bing! Bada Boom!, the musical opening at MusicalFare this week, when his brother gave their dad a CD compilation of Italian-American pop hits of the 1950s and 1960s. From Dean Martin singing “That’s Amore” to Rosie Clooney on “Mambo Italiano” to “Volare,” these songs evoked a specific time and place in America, post World War II, when a generation was growing up, proud to be Italian and oblivious to the discrimination experienced by their parents and grandparents.

These were the years of Perry Como, Connie Francis, Louis Prima, Mario Lanza, Vic Damone, Eddie Fisher, Sergio Franchi, Julius Larosa, and Jerry Vale, when Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, Gina Lollobrigida, and Marcello Mastroianni would all become major Hollywood stars. Fashion designers with names like Cassini, Pucci, Gucci, Givenchy, and Simonetta became wildly popular, as did stylish cars with names like Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Ferrari.

Servicemen who had returned from the war brought back tales of faraway places and Hollywood was determined to satisfy a newfound American wanderlust. Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck went on their Roman holiday; three coins thrown into the Fountain of Trevi were celebrated on film and in song; and even Gidget went to Rome.

Italian Americans of the baby boom will remember a genre of working-class Italian-American pop music that featured comic situations, references to Italian culture and the foibles of assimilation. These tunes made heavy use of working-class Italian dialects and double entendre that the older generation could enjoy, but which went over the heads of their all-American progeny. This music is fondly remembered for bringing generations together and for teaching a postwar generation of English-speaking Italians the joy of being Italian.

Lou Monte alone contributed such songs as “Pepino the Italian Mouse,” “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey,” “Paulucci, the Italian Parrot,” and “Lazy Mary.” The latter, a conversation between mother and daughter:

“Lazy Mary, you better get up!”

She answered back, “I am not able.”

“Lazy Mary, you better get up;

We need the sheets for the table!”

This is the music and the time that inspired Maisano. He conceived of an Italian-American singing group called the Bada Bings who share his sense of nostalgia and who get together at Cardinal Synne High School for a reunion concert in a non-specific Midwestern town that could easily be Buffalo, New York. It’s an appropriately kitschy concept in the mold of Forever Plaid or Nunsense.

“Naturally,” says Maisano, “these first-generation Italians are obliged to go over old wounds and to sing these songs.”

“The show is full of my own family history,” he admits. “My grandmother came over on the boat and settled in Detroit. She learned to speak nine languages, just from living in immigrant communities when she first came over, from Croatian, to Russian. She had her basement done up for Christmas all year round, with the second stove to cook for special occasions. This is family for me, but I think these experiences cross cultures. Like Moonstruck, which spoke to everyone, whether you’re Italian or Irish or Jewish or African American, everyone will recognize a bit of their own family and heritage.”

Bada Bing! Bada Boom! opens April 22 at MusicalFare Theatre in Snyder. Conceived and written by Maisano, the show has been directed by Randall Kramer, with musical arrangements by Jim Runfola, choreography by Kristy E. Schupp, and music direction by Jason Bravo.