Continuing opera with other means: Opera,Neapolitan song,and popular music among Italian immigrants overseas

1. Naples and me

One thing appropriately needs to be explained right here at the outset: how my direct familiarity with the city of Naples is limited to just one single trip made when I was still a boy, way back in the early 1960s. ¹ The memory of that experience has gradually faded over the years, and not much remains of it. If one also considers how, although I grew up in Italy, mainly in the North, I am actually Swiss, and when I go back to Italy I am often perceived as a foreigner, that probably gives a good idea of how distant my life experience is from the Neapolitan atmosphere. And yet, my awareness of the role played by this incredibly important city in the cultural history of Italy has progressively increased over time, because of my interest in cinema, literature and – of course – music. ²

It may seem a paradox, or an attempt to be facetious on my part, if I say that, precisely the fact that my connection to Italy is now rather feeble, and I feel no connection at all to Naples, makes me especially prone to sense and appreciate the worldwide reach of the musical repertoire which originated in that city and its surrounding area, the Italian region of Campania. This repertoire, probably better referred to as a genre, goes by the name of ‘Neapolitan song.’ The following pages explain why, as an outsider, it is easier for me to look at this genre in its international spread, and appreciate its reach, than it would be for someone looking at it from their home in the Vomero area or the Rione Sanità.

It is a rather daunting task to attempt to explain what a Neapolitan song is. Of course, no musical genre or style is ever easy to satisfactorily define and describe. ³ This is because more often than not a description made in purely musical terms is not sufficient. A genre is in fact not only a grid, a net if you like, allowing the use of some compositional techniques while excluding others. A genre is also a form of social practice with strong identity connotations. In very general terms what makes a song ‘Neapolitan’ is first of all its use of the distinctive vernacular spoken in the city to this very day. It is also the very frequent occurrence of: a) the alternate use of parallel minor and major mode between strophe and refrain, b) chordal accompaniment in ‘habanera’ rhythm (in its simplest form), ⁴ and c) rather frequent use of ‘Neapolitan sixths.’ ⁵ To be sure, such traits, easy to recognize in score notation, are not necessarily to be found in every single song, although they are indeed frequent. ⁶ An entirely different series of equally distinctive traits that escape notation reside in the manner of performance: the type of vocal production (ranging from the crooning/whispering mode to the almost operatic chest-voice strongly projected to the audience), embellishments, vibrato, etc. It is interesting to observe, in this respect, that in Naples and the surrounding region, traditional, popular, and literate music intertwine to such an extent that it is often hard to tell them apart (De Simone, 1979). ⁷ In speaking of ‘Neapolitan song’ proper, however, one refers to a literate repertoire, in that such songs have an author, were printed, and sold – which did not preclude the possibility they might also be circulated by word of mouth as well, ⁸ especially so since this musical tradition, like others in Italy, has been documented and investigated so far almost solely by insiders. That, as people working in the field of folklore and anthropology well know, entails, on the one hand, the extraordinary advantage of extreme familiarity and, on the other, the disadvantage of not having that kind of distance (in German, one would call it Abstand) that often allows the outsider to realize the peculiarity of things that the insider almost does not notice, because they are taken for granted.

An outsider's look at the historical developments of Neapolitan song may be especially worthwhile today. Neapolitan song has come to mean a lot to many people such as myself and others across the world whose connection to Naples is even more remote than mine. It will be the point of this article to explain how much ‘remoteness’ or ‘cultural distance,’ of the kind I experience myself toward Naples is crucial for understanding the present worldwide dissemination and import of Neapolitan song and how it is perceived and experienced in the most diverse geographic and cultural settings.

2. Cultural distance, homesickness, and other things as well

The expression ‘cultural distance’ is often used to indicate the more or less acute sense of ‘not belonging’ we experience when surrounded by people who speak a language we do not understand, share among themselves a history different from our own and, consequently, have developed patterns of behavior we find disconcerting and an outlook on life based on values we do not recognize and may even abhor. We may also perceive it when confronted with the difficulty of interpreting texts surviving from cultures no longer in existence – albeit in a softer and less dramatic form because we read them in the reassuring surroundings of our home or office. ⁹ We may even be tempted to read them in the context of our own contemporary culture, as if that exotic past were an extension of the present; and yet at some point we are bound to realize that, as LP Hartley (1953) put it, ‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’

Another way of expressing the idea is saying that cultural distance has much to do with, or is a correlate of, perceived ‘exoticism.’ In fact, Victor Segalen (1878–1919) so described it: ‘L'Exotisme n'est que … la perception aiguë et immediate d'une incompréhension éternelle’ (Segalen, 1995: 25). A crucial aspect of this ‘incomprehension’ is that it helps us overlook differences and perceive similarities among peoples who themselves – as insiders – would not perceive as such at all. An interesting and historically significant example of that we find in the Roman Historian Tacitus (ad 55–117), who in his Germania (Tacitus, 1938) described the many tribes living beyond the Alps as one ethnic entity – as ‘Germans’ – whereas they themselves (speaking languages that were not intercomprehensible) in no way felt they belonged together. It was Tacitus’ cultural distance that allowed him to overlook differences and perceive similarities and thereby make a statement that was in later times of great importance for the development of a German identity. Indeed, time and again, human groups may feel it is advantageous to identify with the perception others have of them.

Of course, we know of no objective, quantitative manner of measuring cultural distance, but we all easily recognize it; especially so in the case of musical experiences – when it would actually be more appropriately named ‘aesthetic distance.’ ¹⁰ When, for instance, Samuel Johnson spoke of Italian opera as ‘an exotick and irrational entertainment’ he expressed, disguised as criticism, how foreign he felt in relation to an art form belonging to a culture he only knew indirectly. We constantly find ourselves in similar situations and in our own way assess cultural distance automatically, often without realizing how much our judgment – aesthetic as well as ethnic – may be the result of such perception. Surely, no one listening to a Neapolitan song such as ‘O sole mio’ would fail to perceive how it belongs to a tradition that is much closer to the Frank Sinatra repertoire than to Nayaki North Indian songs or Inuit throat games. Because of this perception, North Americans of British descent are more likely to feel empathy with and attribute aesthetic quality to the Italian song than to the others.

‘Cultural distance’ is one thing, ‘geographic distance’ is another, although the second is related to the first and does influence how the first is perceived. Geographic distance, in fact, does considerably alter our perception of cultural similarities; just like distance in space makes details blur, merge with one another, and larger scale configurations appear that may not be visible at all when we are close by, as indeed happens with fractal configurations whose recognition much depends on the scale in which they are observed. To the European observer, for instance, New York and Chicago may simply appear to be typical American cities; but anyone who has experienced life in both of them will probably only see what makes them different (rather than what they have in common). By the same token, one can easily imagine how an alien coming from another galaxy may find Neapolitan songs very similar to those Umm Kulthum used to sing, whereas for us earthlings the difference is simply huge – and if we happened to be either Italian or Egyptian, any comparison would appear incomprehensible and downright ludicrous.

Perhaps the point can be better clarified by way of an anecdote, which, although per se no intellectually rigorous way of gaining knowledge, may have the virtue of dramatizing issues. I once was made aware of how cultural and aesthetic distance interact with geographic location, and in a rather amusing manner. It was when American ethnomusicologist Roderic Knight told me about one of his extended field trips to India. ¹¹ After months spent overseas, so his story went, Roderic felt rather homesick and one day, in an open-air market, surrounded by the sounds of different kinds of Indian music, suddenly one famous song by Swedish pop group ABBA reached his ears. At which point, so he explained, the sentimental tone, expressed in a musical system he had absorbed since early childhood, reminded him so strongly of home that he was moved almost to the point of crying. ¹²

This is more than a simple anecdote about homesickness. One can obviously well understand how an American in India, surrounded by a totally unfamiliar environment, may miss the many habitual things he/she has at home. But what is especially intriguing about the story is how an acute sense of nostalgia was triggered not by truly American music (a BB King blues number or a Billy Joel song) but by something that was actually Swedish. Granted, ABBA sang in English, which is the language of Western pop – Sweden included – and ABBA has enjoyed wide international popularity. It is nonetheless doubtful, had my friend been in Iceland, rather than in India, that ABBA would have triggered his nostalgia for his home in Ohio! In such cases distance, geographic and cultural, makes all the difference, and plays a role in our perception of what relates or does not relate to what we feel we are. When in India a song by ABBA appears close enough in style to make an American think of the United States. Heard in Sweden itself, it might have reminded Roderic of how un-Swedish he is and have increased his sense of not belonging to Scandinavian culture. In other words, ABBA might have made him feel homesick for the opposite reason that activated his feeling when he was in India. It could therefore be argued that the ‘distance effect’ is in such cases crucial: vicinity makes differences appear more visible; with distance, on the other hand, small differences blur, and that makes it possible for us to empathize with music that would otherwise not be especially close to our sense of self.

One more thing: in cases of a continued experience of ‘distance’, ‘our music’ (or even somebody else’s music, that in the absence of our own may work as a vicar) may considerably help in maintaining emotional contact with our culture of origin when we no longer live as part of it, when we risk losing it, or even when we have for most practical purposes already lost it. In such cases, distance often engenders ‘marginal survival’: when immigrant communities retain culture items and behavior patterns (i.e. language, music, cuisine, etc.) in older forms, sometimes veritable relics, they no longer undergo the evolutionary process taking place in their land of origin; or else they mix what they find compatible with other groups or the native majority of the country to which they migrated. ¹³

Now the question could be asked: what does all of this have to do with Neapolitan song and its contemporary transnational dimension? Quite a lot, I believe, and that is what I shall try to explain below.

3. When Neapolitan song was only Neapolitan

There was a time when this type of song was indeed Neapolitan, and nothing but Neapolitan; unlike today, when the genre these songs give substance to has become a kind of ‘heritage music,’ enjoyed throughout the world, and with which people of different extraction identify in some form or another. ¹⁴ The diverse publics attracted by its traditional character, united as they are in their liking of this music that does not belong to their native tradition, can be considered a ‘sound group.’ A group of people, that is, often transnational, who share a common musical taste but may not have anything else in common except their liking for that one kind of music, which becomes a more or less significant part of the horizon of styles and genres they accept into their lives. ¹⁵ Needless to say, people living in different parts of the world, carriers of musical traditions that are unrelated to the heritage music they have learned to like, are bound to attribute to it connotations (meanings, if you will) that are very different from those apparent to the people originally linked to that music.

What is important to stress, for the purposes of this article, is that in the beginning the geographic spread of Neapolitan song would not reach further than the region of Campania, with its centerpiece the city of Naples, and, to a lesser extent, parts of the Italian South where related dialects are spoken and similar manners of vocal production exist in oral tradition. Its diffusion and appreciation across the southern part of the peninsula was favored by the fact that Naples was the only large city of continental Southern Italy and also one of remarkable cultural importance. Also, from that entire area people would come to Naples and study music in one of its conservatories. ¹⁶ Once in Naples, up until relatively recent times, they could possibly become composers of songs in the Neapolitan style and vernacular. ¹⁷

Let us now go briefly back in history to the second half of the 19th century when in 1861 Italy became a nation. Opera, since its very beginnings in the 17th century, had been a popular genre catering to the educated middle and upper classes, but with some appeal to the less-educated layers of society as well. Especially throughout the 19th century, brass bands disseminated, popularized, and therefore made accessible opera’s arias in locales where no theatres were available. Single arias or even entire operatic scenes were sometimes performed in the main square of villages (Leydi, 1988). Moreover, opera, across the peninsula as well as in Europe at large, where it enjoyed incredible success, was a widely recognized trademark of the land already called Italy, at a time when this name was only a geographic expression. For this reason, opera easily became a useful symbol to make a case for Italian political unity. Elsewhere in Europe, on the contrary, it was traditional music and/or music inspired by the local folklore that was to provide the argument that a land identified by such widely shared traditions needed and deserved to become an independent nation (what in German was called die Nationalitätenfrage). In Italy the situation was unusual: so strongly was opera identified with ‘Italy’ that there was no need for patriots to utilize traditional repertoires for that purpose and to represent their country abroad because the music by Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, which never claimed to have anything to do at all with folklore, served their purpose very well already. ¹⁸ Traditional music would have been useless to that effect, actually counterproductive, as it appeared so dramatically diversified from the North to the South and the islands as to be incapable of providing any common ground (Sorce Keller, 1994a, 1994b, 2014; Prato, 2010). ¹⁹

Opera, on the contrary, really was at that time a powerful symbol for national identity. During the Risorgimento, everywhere in Europe opera was recognized as a glory of that cultural macro-area coinciding with the peninsula, second only to the Italian language. Actually, while only a few very educated people back then spoke ‘Italian’ with some degree of fluency, operatic music enjoyed a much wider circulation. The educated, literate, urbanized people living in Milan, Venice, Rome, or Palermo all shared this tradition that had little or nothing to do with the traditional music practiced in rural milieus (Carpitella and Mila, 1956). Opera and the Italian language were indeed the building blocks on which national identity was forged. No other such symbols for it were available. In music, no other tradition or repertoire could take up that role. The romanza da salotto (the Italian equivalent of the German Lied or the French Mélodie) only circulated among the more educated layers of society, ²⁰ and Neapolitan song was then only a regional tradition. It took a long process, lasting almost a century, for it to lose its exclusive regional connotation and become a symbol of Italy tout court. Incidentally, something similar also happened to alpine choral singing (of which the Coro della SAT in Trient – Trento – is a model example), originally palatable only to northern Italian ears. However, unlike alpine choral singing, the songs of Naples went much further and became, as will be discussed later in this article, widely international.

The very beginning of this ascent towards international recognition is to be seen in the many conservatory-trained composers who were active as songwriters in the Neapolitan style and tradition, and so attracted attention to it. Much of that attention was also gained through the educated and well-travelled middle and upper-middle class of northern Italy; a social milieu interested in the music of important composers, who would buy sheet music for home performances and loved in Neapolitan songs the passionate, melodramatic quality so strongly reminiscent of opera. In fact, operatic music in Italy throughout the 19th century was the music people knew best, loved, and would often sing or play themselves, either by ear or in transcriptions for all kinds of instruments, mandolin and guitar included. That was the beginning of the story of how Neapolitan song gradually ceased to be the property of Neapolitans alone; although they remain to this day (a mystery still waiting to be explained) the only Italians who can identify and be proud of a rich and substantial regional musical tradition.

Two further steps in the dissemination of Neapolitan song occurred when Italy became a nation in 1861.

4. Italian and Neapolitan diasporas

It helps at this point to go back to the geographic and cultural ‘distance effect’ mentioned at the outset. This was felt in World War I, when people from all Italian regions found themselves fighting together against the same enemy in northern Italy and the Alpine territories. That was where southerners and Neapolitans came extensively into contact with northern Italians, and for the first time were exposed to choral singing; and for northerners it was the occasion when they came into first-hand contact with Neapolitan song as it circulated by word of mouth among southern soldiers. Up until then only middle and upper-middle class northern Italians had had some knowledge of it, through musical scores performed and sung in the family circle. ²¹ As a result of such contact, both repertoires, Alpine choral singing and Neapolitan song, came to be considered more generally ‘Italian’ than they had been up until that point, while retaining their regional connotations. World War I was, in this process, a turning point, contained in time and space, one that helped develop the perception that local repertoires could be considered and emotionally related to as more generally ‘Italian,’ even by people who did not belong to their locality of origin.

Another important process had been taking place since the late 19th century, a turning point in its own right and extending over many years: mass migration. In fact, between 1861 and 1976 literally millions of Italians left the peninsula (estimates vary, but the figure lies in the region of 26 million). About half of such immigrants moved to various parts of Europe, while the other half went to the Americas and Australia. Of this massive migration, initiated immediately after the peninsula became a unified nation, about two-fifths came from the Italian South.

And here we do indeed come to the ‘distance effect’ because Italians from Friuli, the Venetian area, or Tuscany would not have originally identified with Neapolitan songs, but once they found themselves in faraway lands, the songs of Naples spoke to them of their original home country, and that music could more easily be felt as their own. In such cases, as one is removed from the land of origin, a sense of empathy to styles and genres that were not a favourite choice comes to the fore more strongly, while regional identification takes a back seat. Benedict Anderson (1983) suggests in his widely cited book that precisely the diasporic spread of people beyond the borders of their land of origin considerably contributes to ‘create the nation’. By observing what often happens to musical repertoires, one might observe that migration and the ‘distance effect’ surely make it easier for people to identify with the music of a larger territory than the sub-national region with which they identified before resettling abroad. In other words, migration helps develop parochial feelings of belonging into national feelings.

That is why the Italian diaspora throughout Europe, the Americas, and Australia was a significant step for Neapolitan song on its way to becoming the kind of heritage music it is today; a repertoire that, while still bearing the connotation of a specific locale, is no longer simply ‘Neapolitan.’ It is made available almost everywhere, enjoyed by different publics capable of appreciating its traditional allure (a ‘sound group’ indeed), a worldwide audience who, needless to say, may like it for different reasons – reasons that native Neapolitans might even consider the wrong ones. ²²

Another aspect of the process that brought Neapolitan song from the status of regional repertoire to that of heritage music is to be seen in the fact, already referred to, that Italian opera and Neapolitan song are not at all unrelated in terms of musical style. The success of the first to some extent paved the way for the success of the second. The connection between the two is made visible in opera composers such as Mercadante, Donizetti, and Bellini, who wrote (as in the case of Mercadante and Donizetti) or are credited to have written (as in the case of Bellini) songs in Neapolitan style, with text in the local vernacular. ²³ And then of course there were the many operatic singers, mostly tenors, from Caruso to Mario Lanza and Pavarotti who found it appropriate for their vocal skills to perform songs belonging to the Neapolitan tradition. The national pride of immigrants from the entire peninsula was obviously flattered by the international success of such tenors, representatives of the only musical tradition everyone shared, namely opera, and who also would often perform and record Neapolitan songs, like the celebrated ‘O sole mio,’ at that point perceived as ‘Italian’. ²⁴ It should also not be forgotten that the first celebrated season of Italian opera was identified with the Neapolitan School of Francesco Provenzale (1627–1704), Alessandro Stradella (c. 1645–1682), Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), and many others. That was how the very words ‘opera’, ‘Naples,’ and ‘song’ came to be perceived in Italy as strongly linked together.

All such factors (the Neapolitan operatic school, major composers writing songs in the vernacular of Naples, World War I, mass migration to the Americas and Australia) made it possible during the first decades of the 20th century – when opera enjoyed its last season of incredible popularity, with the success of Puccini in America, and when the invention of sound recordings made available the voice of Caruso in so many households – for an unprecedented number of people to develop a taste for Neapolitan song and opera at the same time. It was then that migrant Italians in the USA, Argentina, Australia, etc. not only felt closer to both traditions because of the ‘distance effect,’ but also because it is gratifying to identify with a successful art form that is considered a symbol of one’s nation of origin across the world. If that genre is not exactly the identity symbol one would automatically choose at home, when abroad the adjustment, the compromise, can, under such conditions, rather easily be made. Let us just imagine how important it must have been for Italians migrated to the USA, at a time when they were disparagingly referred to with words such as ‘dago’ or ‘wop,’ to identify with a musical phenomenon that was at the same time successful, popular, and gaining highbrow status among the elite of the host country.

5. Neapolitan song among Australian-Italians

The situation of today hardly compares with the one described so far. Italians no longer need to leave their country and seek a better life abroad. On the contrary, like other EU Countries, Italy is receiving a considerable influx of immigrants coming from Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Because of that, its soundscape has drastically changed its configuration – but not only because of that. Opera, in the meantime, has lost its popular appeal; it has been fully elevated to highbrow status, and only lives in its past glory. Moreover, it survives as a theatrical genre only thanks to considerable amounts of public money (whereas its electronic dissemination caters to specialized groups of aficionados who may or may not have ever had experience of it in a theatre).

The times are past in which an opera composer could have the premiere of one of their works (as happened to Pietro Mascagni in 1901 with Le Maschere) in seven different Italian cities at the same time. The times are past in which composers made a name for themselves by writing an opera. At the beginning of the 20th century, opera was still a popular form of musical entertainment, actually accessible to a much larger audience than just those capable of attending performances in major cities; brass bands, transcriptions for all sorts of instruments, performances in village squares, shellack records, barrel organs, and carillons disseminated it to a degree that is difficult to imagine today. After World War II, as it attained full highbrow status, it progressively disappeared from the musical horizon of most Italians, whether at home or abroad.

As far as Australian-Italians are concerned, this writer had the opportunity to investigate their musical tastes and attitudes (in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Brisbane) in the years 2004–2008. It was immediately apparent how rare it was to find among them people who had any active familiarity with the operatic repertoire, if we mean by that the ability to hum ‘La donna è mobile' or ‘Che gelida manina' or owning CDs of the most celebrated arias, and knowing which opera they belong to. There is no eagerness to look for them on radio or television either; and even by tuning into Italian satellite channels, one would be hard put to find there anything operatic, since radio and television in Italy very seldom broadcast operatic music, let alone complete productions – with the exception of the highbrow radio program Rai Tre (the equivalent, in a way, of the US Public Radio). ²⁵ The same could be said of Italian immigrants to the USA back in the 1970s and 1980s, when I did research in Chicago and in Clinton, Indiana (a little town where a considerable portion of the population is of Italian origin).

All knowledge of opera I came across in Australia between 2004 and 2008 was limited to the experience of watching on television the ‘Three Tenors,’ or coming across recordings of the opera-influenced singing styles of Andrea Bocelli or Filippa Giordano. Also, during the Italian language hours of radio stations such as SBS or Canberra Multicultural Service (examined in 2008), it was a rare event to catch any operatic music at all. When that was the case, the perception was also clear that its programming took place more as a duty in regards to highbrow Italian tradition than in response to audience requests.

It could also be added that in music stores located in the Italian inner-city suburb of Carlton in Melbourne, the Italian neighbourhood par excellence, one comes across very little in the way of operatic music, if anything at all; intriguingly, much less than in general interest record stores in other parts of the city that do not cater to any national group in particular. On the contrary, what is abundantly available among music stores in Carlton is a large amount of contemporary Italian popular music of regional interest (more than could be found in major music stores in Milan, Rome, Florence, or Bologna), much of it going back to the second half of the 20th century (which obviously caters to the older generation’s nostalgia) and always a selection of ‘classical’ Neapolitan songs. How anchored they are in the consciousness of Australian-Italians is witnessed by one episode that stands out in my memory of my time spent in Australia. It occurred one day in 2008 when, in Canberra, I was cycling along Lake Burley Griffin. At one point I saw in the distance a group of people having a picnic on the grass, approached them, and the sound of a Neapolitan song I have known since I was a child reached my ears: ‘A’ tazza ‘e cafè’ (it goes with the words ‘Con questi modi o Brigida ‘na tazza e cafè parite …’). ²⁶ The people there, who were eating and enjoying the conviviality as well as the music, were retired men and women surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Typically, only a small minority among them originally came from the Neapolitan area. But they all enjoyed classical Neapolitan songs. One could almost say that both northern and southern Italians in Australia are today, as far as music is concerned, all Neapolitan at heart! (Barwick and Sorce Keller, 2012).

It is especially intriguing that, while opera has substantially disappeared from the musical horizon of most Italians, immigrants included, the contrary is true of Neapolitan song. When people of Italian origin get together today, coming from different regions, the songs of Naples are seldom absent from the music they play or listen to. It is apparently the repertoire that represents like no other the common ground (possibly the only one) shared by all people of Italian origin – Neapolitans included. That is especially the case when they have made their home in countries geographically very remote from the peninsula (the ‘distance effect’ once again). Neapolitan song is also, at this time, the only repertoire that non-Italians immediately identify as ‘Italian,’ and for which wide empathy is felt. One is tempted to say that it has to some extent replaced opera by inheriting its function as the repertoire that reminds Italians of their land of origin (and, like opera, it is cultural heritage and no longer a living tradition). In terms of its symbolic import Neapolitan song could be described today, at least in the case of Australian-Italians (to paraphrase Karl von Clausewitz (1832) and his famous statement, that war is the continuation of politics with ‘other means’), as the continuation of opera ‘with other means.’ For this reason, and because of the connections this classical Neapolitan tradition has had all along with opera, it would certainly be productive to re-examine the history of Italian opera in connection with this Neapolitan tradition – which, so far, has not been done.

Contemporary Italian popular music is far from attaining comparable symbolic value. It divides people, rather than bringing them together, because of its wide spectrum of genres and styles – none of which has yet become a ‘classic’ – with the possible exception of singers and songs such as the already mentioned Andrea Bocelli and Filippa Giordano whose singing style is intentionally reminiscent of opera (or the songs they sing may actually be operatic tunes themselves) – and, therefore, is not easily told apart from opera by the general international public. No doubt, many listeners across the world mistake Neapolitan song with Italian opera itself.

The same perception of operatic flavor is generated by the entire body of ‘classical’ Neapolitan songs, and also to some extent by the contemporary – those not influenced by Anglo-American music (Neapolitan Blues and Neapolitan Rap) (Plastino, 2007). This is the case with the songs of Mario Merola (1934–2006), Massimo Ranieri (b. 1951), and Nino d’Angelo (b. 1957), which they sing with what in Italy people call ‘una bella voce,’ which unfailingly means a voice in some way comparable to that of an opera singer. When one speaks of ‘classical’ Neapolitan song, reference is made to a repertoire that extends throughout the 19th century and reaches into the 20th, until about World War II. ²⁷ Even in the later part of this period many songs, such as ‘Luna rossa’ (1950) attained international success; and this is the repertoire that clearly has taken over as the ‘one and only’ Italian musical glory that in the Americas and Australia can be shared with non-Italians of all social extraction.

Contemporary Italian popular music does not really serve that purpose at all. Immigrants from the peninsula in America or Australia can hardly share with others the songs of, say, Antonello Venditti, Zucchero Fornaciari, or Elio e le Storie Tese because this is popular music which, for reasons that would require extended discussion to be clarified, does not usually cross its original national borders. Exceptions, like Eros Ramazzotti, remain exceptions; because they do not add up to a repertoire, they hardly attain the status of identity symbols. Moreover, contemporary popular and rock music in Italy, like elsewhere in the world, does not present itself as a homogeneous genre. It makes up, in other words, a cluster of more or less inter-related sub-genres; and it does not have (at least not yet) the ennobling allure of a tradition that has become heritage. Also, this cluster of repertoires mainly developed under Anglo-American influences and, therefore, cannot be perceived either as Italian or as ‘the real McCoy’ by people who live in the Americas – whether they are originally from Europe, Italy, or of other extraction, people who are constantly exposed to the ‘real thing.’

Neapolitan song, on the contrary, is a fairly homogeneous genre, and has now attained the status of a classic. ²⁸ It may seem far-fetched but what happened to it is not at all unlike what happened to the Australian didgeridoo during the 20th century – if a comparison between a genre and an instrument, in so far as their symbolic import goes, is acceptable (Ryan, 2005). ²⁹ Originally, the didgeridoo was the instrument of a few aboriginal tribes in the Northeast. Later it became an instrument of Australian aboriginal identity countrywide. Later still, the ‘didge’ became a symbol for all Australians, and not just for the aborigines. Eventually, this instrument found its place in the much wider space of world music. If we consider how popular Neapolitan music is in America today, from the casinos of Atlantic City and the streets of New York’s Italian neighborhoods, to the remotest corners of the country, then we need to acknowledge a similar process of growth and diffusion.

6. My Neapolitan songs

Neapolitan songs have appeared at significant points in the course of my life. For the reasons explained at the outset, I feel my personal experience of them may add something to the story, because it is that of someone not directly connected with the tradition and, therefore, whose relation to them already signals that they are gaining ground among wider audiences.

The very first Neapolitan songs I heard were those that my mother, Mathilde Keller, used to play at the piano for her own entertainment just as much as she enjoyed transcriptions of Italian operas. ³⁰ She was a German-Swiss. My perception is that to her Neapolitan songs were an extension of the operatic repertoire. No doubt, she recognized in both the same melodramatic quality that, to the eyes of northern, Germanic people, is quintessentially Italian and, yes, in some way ‘exotic.’ A piano amateur capable of easily sight-reading music, but not of playing by ear and ‘faking’ a tune, she relied on a series of old albums that were published year after year, containing the ‘greatest hits’ of the Piedigrotta festival, that song-writing competition that led to the commercial birth of the popular Neapolitan song. Such song collections are most interesting, as they compare in many ways to the published sheet music of the American Tin Pan Alley song tradition as it developed in New York around the 1890s. Both traditions developed in an era when a song's popularity was determined by the number of copies of sheet music it sold (rather than by the number of records). The songs were then presented and promoted as sheet music for voice and piano that the public was induced to purchase when they saw and heard their favourite performers incorporate the songs into their acts, first in the ‘café concerto’, theatre, and vaudeville and later through recordings, later still on radio, then in films, and finally on television. Up until 1950, the publication of sheet music, although progressively declining, remained somewhat relevant. I still remember in those years, Mathilde Keller would visit music stores, select a few songs she considered buying, then go to a piano that the store had constantly available, where she would try out the music, and see whether the setting of the song was effective. That is in fact another characteristic in which Tin Pan Alley and the Neapolitan song industry were somewhat similar; the sheet music arrangement of a song was seldom, if ever, made by the composers of the songs themselves, but rather by musicians specialized in that activity. The choices they made were not always consistent. At times, the arrangement was effective as a piano solo performance, at others as a voice performance with piano accompaniment. At other times still, the arrangements were not really meant for either, but were simply a skeleton to be more or less extemporaneously enriched, a skeleton that would, however, contain all the stereotypical accompaniment patterns, rhythmic and harmonic, that would ensure the performance would adhere to the mainstream style it was expected to portray.

As one further point of contact between the two traditions referred to, before the 1890s such occupations as composer, lyricist, and even publisher of popular music did not exist. This is not to say that popular songs were not written and published, but that no specialized craftspeople were hired expressly to compose and write them on demand. That came later, almost simultaneously in New York and in Naples, after the two traditions established themselves commercially, and either popular singers wanted songs suited to their personalities or publishers demanded songs of a type which a rival had and which the public was currently buying. As Tin Pan Alley and Neapolitan song were becoming commercialized in the early 20th century, so popular music as we know it today was born.

A second important encounter with Neapolitan songs I had was when, in my early 20s, I was trying to become a pop music arranger. That was a time when songs were very often accompanied by an orchestra when performed on radio, television, or in a film soundtrack. Small bands were mostly active in cafés, small town dancing venues, and nightclubs. Arranging a popular song for the orchestra entailed pretty much the same kind of competence in orchestration that composers of more pretentious music were supposed to have. Especially so when it came to arranging Neapolitan songs, where a number of ‘tricks’ and stereotypes of late 19th-century opera were almost unfailingly required. Some of those songs would entail a Bellini-like pizzicato and arpeggio by the strings, in others climatic points had to be made more (melo)dramatic by diminished seventh chords that could usher a surprising modulation and so heighten their ‘strappacore’ (tear-jerking) effect. Although such commonplace underpinnings to the tune could on occasion be combined with more contemporary tricks such as the ‘Mantovani effect’ (the cascading strings of the famous eponymous orchestra), which by then had become the stock-in-trade of any arranger active anywhere in the world.

A third encounter with Neapolitan songs I had a little later in my life, when I was a doctoral student of musicology. Those were the days when the project for the critical editions of Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Bellini was initiated. Intrigued as I was by the unsubstantiated claim that Donizetti (a northern Italian, culturally as distant from Naples as one can imagine, speaking a dialect of which a Neapolitan would not understand a word) might have composed one of the most famous Neapolitan songs of all times (‘Io te voglio bene assaje’), I then became familiar with a set of songs in the Neapolitan vernacular that Donizetti indeed composed. Obviously back then, during the first half of the 19th century, the Neapolitan song already constituted a musical idiom that even non-Neapolitans could speak – as long as they were connected to the operatic tradition which, in some way, would act as a bridge leading to it.

7. Back to the story, and to a temporary cadence

Having come to this point, the story does not end because the main plot which has been summarized so far easily branches off into many directions. One that is still waiting to be followed is that of the impact and influences Neapolitan song exercised on other genres. The Brazilian modinha, for instance, a drawing-room dance, has often been considered an offshoot of Neapolitan song (although this is not yet proven). It is true, however, that both repertoires often use the verse-and-refrain form, with its characteristic contrast of major and minor modes as well as frequent use of the ‘habanera’ type of accompaniment – and here we have, therefore, another story that needs to be told another time, and it is not the only one to remain, so to speak, on stand-by. I have already mentioned that there is a relationship between Italian opera and Neapolitan song, but this relationship is far from being sufficiently clarified. In both genres, one finds similar melodic forms, harmonic structures, and accompaniment patterns. That surely explains why several opera composers could be comfortable writing songs in the vernacular Neapolitan tradition, and why opera singers always find it suitable to their vocal skills to perform songs such as ‘O sole mio’ or ‘A Marechiare.’ But one question, among others, that remains unanswered, coming from an observation that is very easy to make, is why we find in the Neapolitan tradition two very different modes of performance. One is very theatrical and requires a full chest voice, with ample vibrato, very melodramatic in quality (the one we find, for instance in Mario Merola), and this is the one that opera singers find congenial. The other is the complete opposite, a whispered kind of crooning (as with Fausto Cigliano and Roberto Murolo), produced by a singer sitting on a chair and embracing his guitar, and that could not be any further removed from the theatrical glamour of the first performance mode. ³¹ Many music lovers outside Naples prefer the second to the first, this writer included; a preference voiced by Alessandro Baricco when he wrote that Neapolitan song ‘bisognerebbe cantarla tutta piano, sottovoce, con qualche strumento scordato’ (‘it should be sung softly, accompanied with an out of tune instrument’ – Baricco, 2001: 95).

Finally, it should be briefly mentioned that the soundscapes of Naples today could not be more different from those of 1835 when ‘Io te voglio bene assaje,’ traditionally attributed (and probably wrongly so) to Gaetano Donizetti became one of the first hit songs of modern times (Sorce Keller, 1984). Music in Naples has been undergoing constant change and evolution. While the older style became a classic and a somewhat highbrow genre, popular across the world, an incredible number of new styles evolved. They very much belong to our time, nourished by the experience of the folk music revival that took place in Italy, like elsewhere in the world, back in the 1960s and 1970s and, at the same time, by contact and influence exercised by Anglo-American styles and genres. This incredible variety of contemporary Neapolitan styles is, of course, quite another story, to be told on another occasion …