The city emerged as a major source of performance talent, especially in the aftermath of the second world war. Ludovico Virgilio/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Neapolitan actor Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi de Curtis di Bisanzio, known as Totò. Another song, “Funiculì, funiculà”, was composed to celebrate the opening of the funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius in 1880. The famous “’O sole mio”, sung in Neapolitan dialect, was written in 1898. Naples has a long musical history: its songs from the 19th century are still popular today. The city was a hotspot for talent and experimentation. According to media scholar Peppino Ortoleva, Naples became to “Italian popular culture what the New Orleans-Nashville axis is to US culture”. Over the course of the 20th century, however, Naples became celebrated as the cradle of Italian popular culture. In the late 19th century, the Italian South – and Naples in particular – was viewed by its northern rulers as uncivilised and barbaric. More often, though, it is seen as a thorn in the side of the modern nation-state.
On one hand, since Italy was unified in 1861, Naples has been held up as the epitome of all things Italian. That ambiguity is also present in Italian attitudes to the city. It also resulted in the widespread portrayal of Naples as an exotic and often incomprehensible place, simultaneously seductive, thrilling and bewildering. The contrast between the magnificence of the city’s setting and the squalor of its rowdy underclass contributed to Naples’ proverbial reputation as a “paradise inhabited by devils”.