The NEAPOLITAN SONG and THE GREAT POETS from the 13th to the 20th century

This is a lecture-show in which I recount and go back over the history of the Neapolitan song from the 13th to the 20th century. I start from vocalized expressions of everyday life - anonymous Villanelle, La rumba degli scugnizzi by R. Viviani -, and I go on with the late 18th century love   lyrics  - Fenesta vascia - and the birth of the Tarantella, dwelling on the production of poets such as Salvatore Di Giacomo, Libero Bovio, Ferdinando Russo, and so on.

Anecdotes are my main instruments. Often ignored, they are the real source of the most beautiful and successful songs of our cultural heritage, songs that enrich the tradition of the Neapolitan song with eternal beauty, turning it into something precious for the whole mankind.

This shows combines, as it were, music and lectures. It is a nice fun romantic musical analysis of the Neapolitan song, that I perform on the stage as an actress and a singer, with M. A. Bianchi and/or F. Bancalari on the pano.

Doing this, I have particularly concentrated on women as depicted in songs and stage productions, selecting the following themes:

1) ‘inspiring’ women;
2) ‘carnal’ women - as in F. Russo’s…… ‘ma tu nasciste pe m’affatturà’ from Scetate -, sometimes described with more elegiac accents as in Di Giacomo’s production, or with critical and misogynist elements - ‘Catarì pe nù capriccio tu vò fa scontento a’ n‘ato, e ppò quando l’è lassato addù n’ato vuò vulà’ from Palomma e’ notte;
3) women committed to social causes - A’ seggia elettrica by E. A. Mario,  Filumena Marturano by Eduardo De Filippo.

My aim is to explain the particular alchemy that makes the Neapolitan song and poetry topical and worldwide famous items.

The critic Pietro Gargano wrote, ‘the core/amore rhyme is often the most banal, but it can become the most sublime’.

This show has been performed in embassies, conference rooms and on the stage, meeting with great success, also in front of international audiences, made of people who did not speak Italian and had heterogeneous cultural backgrounds.

Show debuts:

1999 Korea, Seul, Italian Embassy (Amb. C. Trezza)

2000 Germany, Munich (I.I.C. and Plen. Min. V. Tedeschi)

2001 Luxembourg., Italian Embassy (Amb. R. Campanella)

2002 France,  Nice,  Italian Consulate  (Plen. Min. D. Vecchioni)

2002 Germany, Nuremberg, Italian Consulate (Cons. M. Lorenzini)

2005 Rome, Foreign Office Club

2005 France, Toulouse, Italian General Consulate (Cons. Rocci)

Organized by Roberto Di Palma
robydipalma@virgilio.it