Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical
A Four Person Music and Storytelling Experience.
An Original Canadian music-theatre work created by Loredana Cunti.
Shocking True Events.
Iconic Italian Songs.
A story of love, loss and the bittersweet taste of dreams gone cold.
"A musical about ice cream based on true events and packed with iconic Italian folk tunes we all recognize
— can it get sweeter than that?"
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From Naples to Scotland, journey through a heartwarming musical tale of love, legacy, resilience and reinvention and the bittersweet taste of dreams gone cold.
At the turn of the 20th century, 16 year old Caterina sets out from the port of Naples to join her fiancé in Canada, but a betrayal at sea leaves her stranded on the rugged shores of Scotland. Armed with little more than a few belongings and a pouch of her Nonna's precious cocoa, she begins making ice cream — transforming her struggles into sweetness. But when a kind-hearted young fisherman offers her strawberries and something unexpected stirs, Caterina must decide: can she churn heartbreak into hope?
Inspired by the true history of Italian immigrants diverted by deceit and woven with world-famous Neapolitan song and operatic aria, Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical is an intimate, moving tribute to resilience, cultural inheritance, and the joy found in unexpected places — through music, memory, and a simple scoop of ice cream.
From the Creator
My parents left Italy in the 1960s with little more than courage and a dream. Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical is a love letter to that journey — woven from the songs my Nonna sang and the heritage and stories I want my children to know. My hope is that second, third, and fourth generations will be inspired to embrace and preserve what their families carried across an ocean. At its heart, it is a story about reinvention — and the belief that even when the life we dreamed doesn't come true, a new life is still possible. And that even in the hardest of times, joy can be found
in something as simple as a scoop of ice cream.
— Loredana Cunti, Creator & Librettist
The Experience
Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical is an intimate four person music and storytelling experience featuring soprano, accordion, classical guitar and organetto. World-famous Neapolitan songs and operatic arias — including O Sole Mio, Santa Lucia, Core 'Ngrato, and Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro — are woven into live narration, where every song deepens the story and draws you further into Caterina's world. A full-colour printed program with selected lyrics with translations, and cultural notes is included, and the performance culminates with audiences sharing a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream.
Two Person Debut Performance Highlights, October 2025
Meet the Artists
Creator & Librettist
Loredana Cunti
Accordionist
Michael Bridge
Soprano
Reilly Bianchi-Nelson
Guitarist
Tonino Chiodo
For Producers & Presenting Partners
Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical is currently in development and actively seeking co-producers, presenting partners, and venue programmers to bring this story to wider audiences across Canada and beyond.
The 65-minute travelling production combines monologue, musical underscore, song, and rich visual projections, and is designed for smaller venues, festivals, and community events. The full production is a larger-scale work featuring tenor and crossover repertoire, where the musicians step into the story as characters.
With a four-person cast and flexible staging, the production is designed to tour efficiently while appealing to Italian Canadian communities, multicultural audiences, classical music lovers, and musical theatre audiences alike.
Loredana Cunti brings more than thirty years of international film, television, and children's entertainment production experience to the project along with longstanding relationships across Canada's cultural, festival and media communities.
A full libretto including dialogue and additional songs is available upon request.
If you are interested in presenting, co-producing, or partnering, we would love to hear from you.
PRODUCTION OVERVIEW
• 65-minute chamber-scale production
• English-language storytelling
• World-famous Italian songs & arias
• Rich visual projections
• Four acclaimed Canadian artists
• Immersive post-show organetto gelato reception
• Early Critical and Audience Acclaim
