Giovinezza

The story

"Giovinezza" ("Youth") was composed by the lawyer and composer Giuseppe Blanc in 1909 as "Il Commiato" ("Farewell"), a graduation song of the University of Turin. It became popular among Italian soldiers in the First World War, and as the "Inno degli Arditi" it was the hymn of the Arditi, an assault corps of the Royal Army whose members later joined the fascist movement in large numbers. Gabriele d'Annunzio's mass rallies in Fiume spread it further. The version sung during the March on Rome was arranged by G. Castaldo in 1921 on Blanc's score, with words by Marcello Manni. After the march Benito Mussolini commissioned Salvator Gotta to write new words, completed in 1924, which made youth and nationalism the themes of the hymn.

From 1924 to 1943 "Giovinezza" was the official hymn of the National Fascist Party and of the regime, and an unofficial national anthem of the Kingdom of Italy. Official regulations had the Royal March, the state's anthem, played before it, and some sources consider that "Giovinezza" displaced the Royal March in practice, to the dismay of King Victor Emmanuel III: the pairing became a symbol of the diarchy of king and dictator. It was played at sporting events, in films and at public gatherings on the slightest pretext, and those who did not join in, foreigners included, could be roughed up by the Blackshirts. In the 1930s it became the official anthem of the army, and the school day had to open with it or with "Balilla", the song of the regime's youth organisation, the Opera Nazionale Balilla. A faint recording played in the Chapel of the Fascist Martyrs at the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, and Italian radio closed each day's broadcasting with it.

The hymn followed the opening of the Fascist parliament in 1924, elected under the Acerbo Law. Beniamino Gigli recorded it in 1937; the recording was later left out of his complete edition issued by EMI. On 12 March 1939, the day of Pius XII's coronation, the papal Palatine Guard played it in an exchange of courtesies with the Italian guards, who answered with the papal hymn, an incident outside the ceremony and without the pope's knowledge. A German song set to the tune replaced "Giovinezza" with "Hitlerleute", and Japanese translations were made to mark the Tripartite Pact and used in Japan's overseas broadcasting.

The conductor Arturo Toscanini, who had stood as a Fascist candidate in 1919, refused to conduct it in Milan in 1922 and later at Bayreuth. Mussolini stayed away from the premiere of Puccini's Turandot at La Scala on 25 April 1926 because Toscanini would not play it first. When Toscanini refused again at a concert in Bologna in May 1931, Blackshirts assaulted him, and he left Italy until after the Second World War.

After Mussolini was ousted in 1943, Italian radio closed its broadcasts with the Royal March alone for the first time in 21 years. New words were drafted for the Italian Social Republic, whose unofficial anthem it became; the triumphant tone of the old words did not fit the civil war then being fought in Italy, and the hymn preceded the Nazi radio broadcast announcing that republic. After Italy's capitulation in 1943 the Allies suppressed the hymn. Italy had no national anthem until "Il Canto degli Italiani" was provisionally chosen on 12 October 1946, after Italy became a republic; it was made official by law on 4 December 2017.

What it says

A fascist party hymn whose theme is youth and the nation; triumphant and martial.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.