The fortune of Umberto Giordano (1867-1948) was made by Andrea Chenier, whose opening night in 1896 was a triumph. It has remained his most popular work ever since, but he did write other fine operas that deserve revival. One of these is his next-to-last opera, La cena delle beffe ("The Dinner of Mockers"), based on a play by Sem Benelli, a writer whose sensational themes titillated Italian audiences in the early twentieth century. The play and the opera are packed with lurid incidents, some of which still seem shocking today!La cena delle beffe was first performed at La Scala on December 20, 1924. The conductor was Arturo Toscanini, and the cast included tenor Hipolito Lazaro and soprano Carmen Melis, major stars of their era. The London Times reported that the opera was "crowned by an enormous success," and it was given a season later at the Metropolitan Opera with stars such as Titta Ruffo, Beniamino Gigli, and Frances Alda, conducted by Tullio Serafin. The New York Times proclaimed it "a sweeping success". Benelli"s play was already familiar to New Yorkers from a 1919 Broadway production starring John & Lionel Barrymore.After twelve performances in two seasons, La cena delle beffe disappeared form the Met repertory, but by 1930, it had been produced in more than forty cities, from Buenos Aires and Barcelona to Prague, Chicago, and Warsaw. In the following decades, however, it was staged only seven times until successful revivals at the 1987 Wexford Festival and Zurich in 1995. This live performance comes from a RAI radio broadcast in 1972.