The Rose Tattoo

Act One

At dusk in a village along the Gulf Coast, Serafina delle Rose waits for her husband Rosario to get home. Her 12-year-old daughter Rosa is catching lightning bugs around the house. The local healer, Assunta, stops by and offers powders for Serafina to give her husband, hinting that he might need control over his love impulses. Serafina laughs at the suggestion, and tells Assunta that she is pregnant--the moment she conceived, Serafina had a vision of Rosario’s tattoo on her own breast. While it was only there for a moment, she knows it was a sign that in her “body another rose was growing!” Assunta laughs at Serafina’s reliance on signs, and leaves to attend to another woman in the village.

Serafina grows impatient waiting for Rosario. A thin blonde woman (Estelle Hohengarten) arrives, asking that Serafina make a man’s shirt made from rose-colored silk and offering triple the asking price to have the garment done by the morning. Serafina agrees, but is distracted by the