Reading Terminal salutes Italy.

For most people, the meatball says it all.

Red, round, and spicy, it symbolizes Italian food and culture for a lot of Americans.

"You don't know the new Italy," lamented Giorgio Galanti, from Milan. "Americans are connected to the old country from years ago. You need some new suggestions about what Italy is today."

At Reading Terminal Market's first-ever Italian festival on Saturday, Galanti, a cultural officer with the Consulate General of Italy in Philadelphia, tried to convince people that his culture is more than chopped meat on a mound of pasta.

"We have fashions from Milan," lobbied Galanti, lean and cosmopolitan, sporting black, heavy-framed designer glasses. "There are important new writers and directors. Even our music is fresh."

But as he spoke, old-school strolling accordionist Ralph Salerno of Roxborough drowned out his impassioned pitch for modernity with "That's Amore," a silly but beloved Dean Martin chestnut about the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie.

Galanti never stood a chance.

"Beautiful!" a man yelled at Salerno, jaunty under a cocked straw hat, and secure in the knowledge that traditional Italian American music still has its place.

"With Italians," Salerno said, smiling, "things are done with passion."

Certainly, that was a theme of the festival, which highlighted eight Italian vendors at the terminal who took up space in the center court to offer sausages and peppers, prosciutto-wrapped melon, sauteed broccoli rabe, and, of course, pizza, pasta, and meatballs.

"When we cook, we cook from the heart," intoned Charles Guinta, at 85 a market fixture, working these days at his son's stand, Martin's Meats. "We make it tasty."

Confidentially, Guinta added, the market's Italian vendors "needed a boost" from an event like the festival to help them through a sagging economy.

"The Amish here do OK on their own," he said.

Sure enough, said Paul Steinke, general manager of the market, the Pennsylvania Dutch festival is the market's most popular event each year.

The Italian festival this year replaced the Scrapple Fest of 2009, Steinke said.

That one could even say scrapple and scaloppine in the same sentence is blasphemy to some foodophiles, such as Nancy Gilboy of Rittenhouse Square.

"It's always Italian food my husband and I want, even when we travel," said Gilboy, 56, who was sampling wine at the festival. "When we were in Spain, we loved everything but the food. It'd be a perfect country if they could outsource its cuisine from Italy."

There's just something about Italian food that compels a person to look beyond her own heritage and indulge in whatever the sunny peninsula has to offer, noted Peggy Manuszak, 61, of Millsboro, Del.

"I'm an Irish girl, but I love Italian food," she said. "There's a warmth to it that speaks to family and sharing."

Her sister Mary Payne, 58, also of Millsboro, agreed. "It makes me feel like home," she said.

Beyond food, another Italian preoccupation - opera - appealed to senses and emotions Saturday.

At one point, around 30 members of the Opera Company of Philadelphia showed up to sing "Libiamo," a duet about drinking and kissing from La Traviata.

Steinke noted that market customers not even involved in the festival stopped in their tracks and stood still for four minutes, some of them moved to tears while the singers walked toward center court as they sang.

He added that the power of the moment was heightened by the market itself, its hard surfaces and wooden ceiling allowing the muscular operatic sound to bounce and rebound.

"I almost teared up myself," he said.

Just then, the day seemed to move beyond the meatball to something more sublime.

"Music," said Salerno, the accordionist. "That's part of the heritage, too."