“O’ Giglio e Paradiso”: An Italian-American Musical Classic

Today is the opening of the annual Brooklyn giglio feast in honor of the fifth century bishop St. Paulinus of Nola (Naples province, Campania), introduced by Nolani immigrants to the United States in 1903. The contemporary Williamsburg festa features approximately 125 men lifting and carrying a multi-storied tapering spire, known as the giglio (lily), or, more accurately, u’ gigl’, consisting of a painted papier-mâché façade attached to an aluminum frame. The feast’s dramatic climax is the meeting of the tower and a second ceremonial structure—a boat, complete with mast, sail, and rigging—at the intersection of Havemeyer and North 8^th Streets in an enacted evocation of a mytho-historic moment when the jubilant townspeople welcomed home their manumitted bishop by waving lilies.