Text Box:  23. This composer’s name is Amilcare (A mee car’ ray) Ponchielli (Ponk ee el’ lee). With a name like that you know he must be Italian. Although a great composer, he is not ranked by Goulding because he has only one or two works that are well-known. The one on the CD is called Dance of the Hours, and comes from his opera, La Gioconda (Gee a cond’ da), written in 1876. Ponchielli was born in 1834 and died in 1886 at age 52. By the way, the great operatic composer, Puccini, was a student of Ponchielli, and “La Gioconda” in Italian means “The Joyful Girl”. Interestingly enough, the real name for the most famous painting in the world, The Mona Lisa, is La Gioconda. You probably recognized this work when you heard the CD because its music has been set to verse many times…the most famous in 1963 by Allan Sherman when he voiced the words, “Hello Muddah, Hello, Fuddah, here I am at Camp Granada”.