Well, it didn't happen. In late November, all of Naples was glued to the tube for the announcement—THE announcement—live, direct from Switzerland. The Swiss were about to make their decision as to the site of their 2007 defense of the America's Cup, a major regatta (also—for you landlubbers—known as a boat race).

The mayor of Naples was shown on the screen, her eyes closed, holding up double-barrelled crossed fingers just for luck. Here it came!—"Valencia!" Boo-hiss. Disappointed mayor. Charges of favoritism. We wuz robbed. Crossed fingers swiftly converted to another hand gesture that I would not think of describing to your genteel sensitivities.

The regatta, had it happened, would have meant the construction of a new, world-class boat harbor in Bagnoli. The entire area was—and remains—scheduled for rejuvenation anyway, and work has already started on that ambitious project. The ugly steel mill—an incredible piece of industrial blight--is being torn down. A new fair grounds, Science City, is already open. The regatta and boat harbor would have been a major shot in the arm, true, but work shall continue—with or without the boat race.

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I have a rather eclectic collection of books about Naples: archaeolgy, history, music—whatever strikes my fancy, really. It's not a huge collection, but it is stuffed with many of those tiny and ephemeral pamphlets that come out all the time about the "Caves of  Naples," "The Customs of Naples," "The This & That of Naples." Maybe a few hard ones, such as The Major-Minor Shift  in the Neapolitan Song as a Manifestation of the Existentialist Dichotomy in the Popular Psyche, (OK, I made that one up.) I have a few standard works such as Acton's The Last Bourbons of Naples,  and I am an absolute sucker for passages about Naples in 19th century works such as Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. (For an excerpt, click here.)

Occasionally, I get on the internet just to see what is out there in used book shops, not because I am necessarily going to buy, but I might. I have found a couple of good volumes that way about, for example, the American reaction to Garibaldi's invasion of the Kingdom of Naples, and Antonio Pace's great book,  Benjamin Franklin and Italy.

So, just for fun, I looked a bit today. There is nothing like a used–book store, even if it's only in cyberspace. Right off the bat, I see something I want:

H.M.S. " Hannibal " at Palermo & Naples, During the Italian Revolution, 1859–1861. With Notices of Garibaldi, Francis II., & Victor Emanuel, by Admiral Rodney Mundy. London : "John Murray. 1st edition, 1863. 8vo.365pp. Frontispiece engraving & map. Some pencil annotation throughout. Inner hinges very slightly strained. Top & bottom of spine, edges & corners rubbed, original cloth lightly marked, else very good copy." Unfortunately, the price is US$233.35. I don't want it that bad. Sometimes the National Library in Naples has these things in the original English as well as an Italian translation. I'll check that one.

Maybe I am setting my sights too high. Ah, $1.39! That's more like it. Let's see: Devil's Daughter, by Catherine Coulter. "New York, NY, U.S.A. 1985. Mass Market Paperback. Good. Spine lines/edge rubs/clean Tight Pgs. Book Description: Golden-haired hellion Arabella goes adventuring to Naples, Italy to solve the mystery of her father's missing ships and cargoes. But soon she discovers that the man behind the thievery is an enemy from her father's past. A man she shouldn't love, but can't resist..".  Well, I'm sure it's a fine book, but I had to go to the OED to even find out what a "hellion" is—a troublesome or mischievous person. No.

And here is John Horne Burn's classic, The Gallery, about the seamy kaleidescope of Neapolitan life at the end of WWII played out in the famous Galleria Umberto. (I understand that the book is about to be republished.) I read it once upon a time but don't own it. For $1.95, this is a definite maybe.

As a sheer curiosity piquer, here's one by the great Polish science-fiction wroter, Stanislaw Lem: The Chain of Chance. London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990. Softcover. Very Good. 5" x 7 3/4". Remainder stripe on bottom of book. "...In Italy, a number of people have died mysteriously. They tend to be foreign, male, middle-aged and to have some connection with Naples. But there the resemblances end and even Interpol have bemusedly closed their files. However, a former astronaut turned private detective agrees to duplicate the exact itinerary of one of the victims in an attempt to decipher the links in an increasingly mystifying chain of coincidence.." 179pp." Three dollars. Mark that one. That's a keeper, especially since "... foreign, male, middle-aged..." reminds me of someone I know.

I don't know about the next one. The Very Daring Duchess by Miranda Jarrett. "... formulaic romance between a conservative Naval officer and an exotic arts dealer. After winning a victory against the French army, Captain Edward Ramsden, the unwanted fourth son of the Duke of Harborough, and a fellow officer decide to explore Naples and enjoy its diversions. Their first stop is the illustrious Signora Francesca Robin's studio d'artista, an eclectic museum containing a number of bogus art pieces as well as a large display of lewd paintings... The story escalates with the promise of intrigue and sexual tension but, unfortunately, Jarrett packs her tale with maudlin dialogue and clichè commentary. Although Jarrett's sex scenes are steamy and descriptive, her characters are little more than cardboard..." Three dollars and forty–two cents. Too steep—sexual tension and steam notwithstanding.

Here's one that is actually intriguing: A woman, a man, and two kingdoms: the story of Madame d'Epinay and the Abbot Galiani, by Francis Steegmuller. Madame d'Epinay was Rousseau's patron. She set him up in a gloriously free and bucolic country estate where he could feel like a noble savage. ("Garçon, a bit more curare on my spear-point, please.") Ferdinando Galiani  (1728-1787) was one of the great minds of the Neapolitan Enlightenment and the author of some important works in economics. He was also the ambassador of the Kingdom of Naples in France in the 1760s. It is entirely possible that he and madame d'Epinay had something going, but I don't know. I don't even know if I want to know.

Oh, no. Here's a mistake. Even worse, it's bald-faced baloney (that's disgusting!): Marriage Italian Style, by Arnold Hano. "...Basis for spicy 1964 Sophia Loren film... whore's efforts to get longtime lover and womanizer to marry her and stay true..." That, of course, is totally wrong. The "basis for Sophia Loren's spicy 1964...etc." was the stage-play Filomena Marturano by Eduardo de Filippo.

How about The Bay of Noon, by Shirley Hazard. "... NY: Picador, 2003. Trade Paperback. Near Fine/No Jacket. Reprint. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 181 pp. A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Binding tight, text clean...". I think I know that woman. Tight binding, clean text. That's her.

Here it is! This is the one I want. One of the classics in its genre: Illustrated Excursions in Italy, by Edward Lear: " London: S. & I. Bentley, Wilson & Fley for Thomas M'Lean, 1846. 2 volumes, folio. (14 1/2 x 10 5/8 inches). Half-titles, 2pp. publisher's advertisments at back of vol.II. Titles with wood-engraved vignettes, 55 fine tinted lithographic views by Lear, printed by Hullmandel & Walton, 2 lithographic maps, hand-coloured in outline, 2 leaves engraved sheet music at back of vol.I, 53 wood-engraved vignettes after Lear and R. Branston. (Some spotting). Original green cloth, blocked in gilt and blind. Modern green cloth box, green morocco lettering piece. A fine complete set of Lear's magisterial record of his travels through Italy. The first volume covers Lear's tours through the Abruzzi region, "or three Northern provinces of the kingdom of Naples" (p.1). He made three excursions between July 1843 and October 1844, recording in both words and pictures the most memorable and pictureque of the scenes he encountered. In the preface he notes that object of the work was "the illustration of a part of Italy which.. has hitherto attracted but little attention. With the exception of [two other works].. I am not aware of any published account of the Abruzzi provinces in English; and the drawings with which the following pages are illustrated are, I believe, the first hitherto given of a part of Central Italy as romantic as it is unfrequented" (preface). The second volume, with much briefer text than the first, includes views "of places in the States of the Church - most of them within easy reach of visitors to Rome; yet, with the exception of Isola Farnese, Castel Fusano, and Caprarola, ..seldom seen by Tourists" (Preface). Lear notes in both volumes that the drawings "are Lithographed by my own hand from my sketches".

And it is only $ 9,500. Here—to make that redundantly transparent—nine–thousand five–hundred dollars. 

I think I'll go back and check on Jenny of the tight binding and clean text.

to books about Naples   (2)   (3)

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Bovio, Libero (1883-1942)

Together with Ferdinando Russo and Salvatore Di Giacomo, Libero Bovio was at the heart of the great rebirth of Neapolitan dialect poetry and theater at the beginning of the 20th century. His unusual first name—"Libero" (Free)—apparently is traceable to the anti-monarchist sentiments of his father, a philosophy teacher. Father also envisioned a medical career for his son, and though Libero, indeed, entered medical school, he is said to have fainted at the sight of all those cadavers and body parts during his first anatomy lesson. So much for the future Dr. Bovio.
To pursue his passion for dialect poetry and theater, he took odd jobs at newspapers and then went to work in the export office of the National Museum. He then became director of "Canzonetta," a small publishing concern dedicated to the music of Naples.

A collection of his dialect comedies appeared in 1923 and his collected poems were published in 1928. He is primarily remembered for his lyrics to some 600 Neapolitan songs, set to the music of the great Neapolitan song writers of his day. Among his best remembered lyrics are "Reginella," "'O paese d' 'o sole" and, in 1925, the ultimate emigrant tear-jerker, "Lacreme napulitane" a song that describes the drama of the immigrant Neapolitan in America, far from home and hearth at Christmas. The opening line of the refrain, "E nce ne costa lacreme st'America a nuie napulitane..." ("How many tears this America has cost us Neapolitans...") set to a keening oriental minor melodic line by Francesco Buongiovanni, are among the best known lyrics in the entire repertoire of the Neapolitan Song.

Bovio's home in Naples was quite a watering-hole for literati of the day. You can even see the manuscript of a song composed by Puccini, himself. The maestro was sitting at Bovio's piano and decided to knock out a tune. He called Bovio over to write Neapolitan lyrics; the manuscript on display bears both the handwritten music by Puccini and Bovio's lyrics.

Stories that circulate about Libero Bovio indicate that he was very well-liked and possessed of humor and good-natured wit. He supposedly had his horse-drawn coach stop one morning so he could alight and answer an urgent call of nature in the shadow of a building. He was approached by a policeman:

"Oh, Don Libero—it's you! You know I have to write you up for that."
"I know. I couldn't hold it. So how much is the fine?"
"Two lire and fifty cents."
"Fine," says Bovio, handing the cop a five-lire note.
"Five? I can't change that."

Bovio looks up at his coach-driver and says, "Get down here and take a leak. Help the officer out."

 
This magnificent fountain is also known as the "Immacolatella". Both names derive from two of the locations that have been home to the fountain during its many travels. (Being moved is a risk you take if you are a fountain in Naples. Click here for another example.) The fountain was sculpted in the early 1600s and is the work of Michelangelo Naccherino (1559-1622) and Pietro Bernini (1562-1629). It was first located near the Royal Palace near a statue of "The Giant," recovered from the ruins of Cuma. In 1815 the fountain was moved to the port of Naples to be in front of the Immacolatella, the old quarantine station (click here for more on that site). It was then moved near the Carmine church at Piazza Mercato; then to the gardens on the square of San Pasquale a Chiaia; then finally, in 1905, when the new seaside road was finished during the "risanamento" of Naples the fountain was moved to its present location (see photo) at the pituresque curve beween via Partenope and via Nazario Sauro not far from the Castel dell'Ovo.

Amid the three rounded arches and above and on the sides of the fountain, besides the main basin adorned with marine life, the work is decorated with caryatids holding a cornucopia, as well as with the coats of arms of the city and of the Spanish vice-realm.

The Bernini involved with this fountain  is, by the way, not the Bernini of the great colonnade of St. Peter's in Rome. That would be Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). This Bernini—Pietro—was his father.

(More on the fountains of Naples.)

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Elsewhere in this Naples Encyclopedia, in the entry on Nisida and Carlo Poerio, I make reference to William Gladstone's Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen on the State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government, the publication of which in pamphlet form in 1851 exposed the horrendous conditions in Neapolitan prisons of the day. The letters, too, were a general condemnation of the absolutist Bourbon monarchy.

I came across a review of Gladstone's pamphlet in an 1851 issue of Littell’s Living Age, a New York journal that specialized in reprinting material from foreign journals. The reprint, in this case, is from The Spectator, a prominent journal of British liberalism.

The review is in the "Through the eyes of..." section of this Around Naples website. Click here to read that review.

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Every few years, another locally published, small-press book comes out about Neapolitan hand gestures. These gestures are a bit of local culture that charms the rest of the world; after all, everyone knows that "Italians talk with their hands." (That, of course, is wrong; southern Italians talk with their hands. Northern Italians, by comparison, lumber about as if they're auditioning for Invasion of the Crippled Skiers). Indeed, there are entire dictionaries hidden and not so hidden in every Neapolitan hand wave, knuckle turn, lip smack, and finger waggle.

One such volume, for example, is Comme te l'aggia dicere? (Neapolitan dialect for "How can I explain this to you?"). The secondary title is in Italian: Ovvero l'arte gestuale a Napoli (Or the Art of the Gesture in Naples). It is by Bruno Paura and Marina Sorge (1999. ed. Intra Moenia, Naples). It has 138 pages, with emotion and message listed alphabetically—"scorn," "approval," "you must be crazy!" etc.—all accompanied by photographs or drawings. Comme te l'aggia dicere? has replaced older volumes, now out of print, and will itself be replaced in a few years when someone else comes out with a new one. Even foreign language guide-books to Naples now generally contain a few pages of pictures and explanations of gestures. (Even if your reading extends, alas, only to t-shirts, you can get those, too: silk-screened front and back with Neapolitan hand gestures plus explanatory captions.)

All this is helpful. Suppose, for example, you loosen your enraged grip on the steering wheel just enough to raise the index and little finger to that driver of the car that has just cut you off. Yes, you may think you are simply expressing your solidarity with the "Longhorn" football team from the University of Texas, but that benighted soul in the other car (who is totally ignorant of college sports in the US) will understand your gesture as a suggestion that his wife, the lovely woman next to him in the front seat and the mother of his children, is betraying him, and he will be honor-bound to run you off the road and have his own good-old college try at taking your life.

If the authors of these books have bibiliographies, they never plug the competition, that is, other recent books similar to their own. They all, however, do cite the graddaddy of all such books about Neapolitan gestures, a volume you will not find in your run-of-the-mill bookshop: La mimica degli antichi investigate nel gestire napoletano, by Andrea de Jorio (“The Mimicry of Ancient Peoples Investigated through Neapolitan Gestures”). It was published in 1832 and drifted into obscurity for many years. In his book The Italians (1964), Luigi Barzini mentions it and laments the fact that so little has been written about the language of gestures. Since 1964, of course, formal studies of sign languages and general body language have become part and parcel of the disciplines of linguistics, communications, and anthropology. Entire curricula are devoted to the semiotics of gestures, so it is natural that de Jorio's book should have made a comeback, which, indeed, it has. The book has been republished in Italian three times in recent years,1964, 1979, and 2002. All of the reprints are photographic copes of the original edition plus explanatory notes.

The volume also appeared recently (2000) in a scholarly and annotated English translation by Adam Kendon as Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Indiana University Press). There are at least two fine reviews of the English translation that I know of, both of which praise the original as well as the erudite translation, which includes an 80-page essay/introduction. The first review is "The Neapolitan Finger" by Joan Acocella; it appeared in the The New York Review of Books in the year 2000 and then in 2002 in Sign Language Studies, a journal published by Gallaudet University. The other review is by Giovanna Ceserani of Princeton University; it appeared the Bryn Mawr Classical Review in 2003.

De Jorio (1769-1851) was born on the tiny island of Procida, a brief sail from the mainland, ancient Cumae and that treasure trove of Greco-Roman mythology known as the Phelgrean Fields. It was also a time when the archaeological sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum were opening up. De Jorio became a canon at the Naples cathedral but was born to be a classical scholar and archaeologist. He wound up as curator of the Royal Bourbon Museum, now the National Archaeological museum. His purpose in writing about gestures, he said, was to show the continuity between the classical world and the modern one. Look at the hand gestures on these old vases, he said. They are the same ones we use today.

Unlike today, such body language was not particularly interesting to scholars of the early 19th century. It might even have been amusing to the Grand Tourists of the day and even have fit into the broad stereotyping of Neapolitans that travellers from Goethe to Mark Twain indulged in (after perhaps one whole carriage trip down the Riviera di Chiaia): the confusion, noise, clatter, color, and the bizarre juxtaposition of pompous one-horse dukes and abject beggars. Maybe the frantically gesticulating locals fit their preconceptions—frantic hand-gibberish or something like that (which the gestures, of course, are not).

De Jorio was no doubt proud to present his compendium as part of classical studies, direct from Naples, one of the hubs of Magna Grecia, the site of important archaeology in the study of ancient Rome, and one of the centers of classical scholarship in Europe. Yes, German scholars of the same period had swarmed through the southern Italian peninsula, but if you thought northern Italians couldn't move, wait till you see German professors not move. What would they know about hand gestures?

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This year's ritual installation of art in Piazza Plebiscito features a work entitled "Naples," by the master of massive minimalism, San Francisco artist Richard Serra (1939-). It is a large spiral (already called "Contraception of the Gods" by those who view with some disdain the city's unabashed dedication to this kind of display). Entering into the giant orange scuplture of curved and bending steel plates, you spiral in, leaning in and out with the curves of the walls, to the center, where you can look up and see the clock tower on the facade of the royal palace (see photo and insert). The individual's perception as he navigates the deceptive geometry of this small, tilted space set in the larger space of the square, itself, is what gives validity to the work, says the artist. Clearly, to be a private experience—to be at all touched by the suggested metaphor of yourself in a similarly skewed private life-space set in the space of the world at large—the wandering in and out is best done slowly and alone and not as part of a curious herd elbowing their way in and out—unless, of course, you spend much of your time elbowing your way through life wondering what it's all about. That, too, is possible.

The work bears an amazing resemblance to Serra's earlier "Torqued Ellipses," done in 1996, separate curved plates of towering steel, which, to the untrained maximalist eye—with a bit of imagination—might be fit together into a spiral.

other items on  installation art '04/05    '08/09   Anish Kapoor   Rebecca Horn

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As the narrow-gauge Circumvesuviana railway wends its way east along the coast from the city of Naples in the direction of the Sorrentine peninsula, it passes through a number of small stations on the slopes of Vesuvius.  Two of the stations have to do with the life of this, Italy's greatest Romantic poet. One station is named, simply, "Leopardi" and the other "Ginestre" (the Italian name for the broom plant, the yellow-flowered shrub that grows abundantly on the slopes, and, as well, the title of a remarkable poem by Leopardi). If this so-called "poet of melancholy" ever found any relief at all in his terribly unhappy life, perhaps it was here, in and near Naples.

There are few child prodigies in literature. Presumably, meaningful reflections on the human condition come from having a few years under your belt—time to love, struggle, wander and let those experiences set for a while, a process less necessary to early greatness in music and mathematics. Thus, we are amazed at Rimbaud and Mary Shelley writing fine literature at the age even of 19 or 20.

Leopardi is in that unusual group. By the age of 16, he was a Latin and Greek scholar; and by 18 he had written lasting poetry. His natural precociousness was no doubt helped along by being a recluse for the first 20 years of his life, holing up in his father's vast library, teaching himself the classics as well as modern European languages. He suffered both from poor eye-sight (that got worse as he grew older) and by a deformity of the spine, a lifelong source of pain, physical as well as social.

He spent time in his home town of Recanati in central Italy as well as in Rome and Florence. Then, in 1833, he moved to Naples to keep the company of Antonio and Paolina Ranieri, brother and sister, whom he had met in Rome. He then moved a number of times in Naples. The cholera epidemic of 1835 caused him to move farther out of the city, winding up at Villa Ferrigni, now called the Villa delle Ginestre (photo, left) ; it is near the small knoll upon which perches the monastery of Sant' Alfonso. Vesuvius looms directly above, and Leopardi's final home is, indeed, near both of the modern train stations mentioned above, named in his honor. It is here that he wrote that 1,800 years had passed "...since the peopled places disappeared, crushed by fiery might, and the peasant busy at his vine...still lifts his eyes suspiciously to the fatal peak..." (in the prose translation of George Kay from the Penguin Book of Italian Verse, published in 1958).

If by melancholy we mean something like wistfulness,  a longing for a happier past or even an unachievable ideal state, then much of Leopard's poetry is not even that. It is simply bleak. He writes of his own loneliness and of nature as a "betrayer" and  "a brutal force." He writes of the "infinite vanity of everything." So if his friendship with the Ranieris made him as happy as he could ever be, maybe all we are saying is that he liked the Neapolitan sherbet and sweets, or that he got a kick out of trying to guess lottery numbers, or went to San Carlo (to fill in his total lack of musical culture), or "worshipped from afar" Paolina Ranieri. (She apparently—as a term of endearment, one hopes—referred to him as "il mio gobbetto"—my little hunchback.)  Not much, but at least it is something.

Leopardi died in 1837. At the time, it was rumored that he had in fact died from cholera, but that seems not to have been the case. His remains were entombed in the small church of San Vitale and then moved to a small space near the Mergellina entrance to the ancient Roman tunnel that connected Naples with the western part of the bay. A monument marks his tomb; it is near the purported last resting place of fellow poet, Virgil.

Because of the quality—or even lack—of translations, Leopardi is not as well known in the English-speaking world as he should be. Translators of poetry, of course, run the risk, as they say, of  "losing poetry in the translation" and, at the other extreme, of "gaining poetry"—of writing a beautiful poem that is too original to really be called a translation. I know that Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, and Robert Bly have translated some of Leopardi into English. My favorite English translation is of a poem written at the graveside of a woman. Her image has been cut into the tombstone. Leopardi says to the image:

"Tal fosti: or qui sotterra 
Polve e scheletro sei. Su l'ossa e il fango 
Immobilmente collocato invano, 
Muto, mirando dell' etadi il volo
Sta, di memoria solo 
E di dolor custode, il simulacro 
Della scorsa beltà. 

Ezra Pound's translation of these first few lines is:

"Such wast thou, 
Who art now 
But buried dust and rusted skeleton. Above the bones and mire,
Motionless, placed in vain, 
Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years, Sole guard of grief 
Sole guard of memory 
Standeth this image of the beauty sped. "

That strikes me as perfect.

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I live near a street in Naples that will never change its name. This is remarkable, since the roller–coaster of historical and social change plays games with Neapolitan urban nomenclature like you wouldn't believe. Via Roma used to be Via Toledo (or maybe it's the other way round); Via Gramsci used to be Via Helena; even the street I live on—named for Victor Emanuel II, the first king of united Italy—was originally named for Queen Maria Theresa of Naples in 1850 when the street was built. 

The lucky, namechangeless thoroughfare I speak of is Viale Maria Cristina di Savoia. Maria Cristina was born in 1812 and died in 1836, a tragically brief life. She was from the royal house of Savoy, the dynasty that eventually came to rule united Italy later in the century. Maria Christina was exceptionally devout and would have entered a convent but for family pressure to marry her off in one of those arranged cross–dynastic affairs that European royal houses used to think were so advantageous. In 1832 she was forced into a marriage with King Ferdinand II of Naples, obviously as a means to cement relationships between the northerners (Savoy) and southerners (Bourbon). Her husband was King "Bomba", (bomb), so–called for his suppression of revolutionaries in Sicily in 1848. He was the next–to–last king of Naples. Their son, Francis, would be the last king. She died two weeks after giving birth to him. Her husband's second wife was Maria Theresa, the original eponym of my street. 

In her brief life in Naples, Maria Christina was totally devoted to benevolent works, actively promoting expansion of crafts, small industry, and institutions to provide for the poor. She was also responsible for mitigating her husband's tendency to hand out death sentences. She quickly became the focus of admiration—even adulation—of the people. She was easily the most beloved queen in the long history of the Kingdom of Naples. In short, she was a saint. Not metaphorically, either. At her death, a cult sprang up around her and her episodes of intercession (to use the Roman Catholic terminology). The process to canonize Maria Christina began in 1859 and she was beatified in 1872. I think she is the only queen (or king) of Naples to be so honored. She rests in the church of Santa Chiara.

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The "What-If" school of history is as futile as it is fun, so it's hard to say what might have happened to Italian opera if young Pietro Trapassi had not moved to Naples to study law. Trapassi is better known as "Metastasio." He was born in Rome in 1698 and died in Vienna in 1782. He is primarily remembered for his libretti, text of such quality that it revitalized Italian opera.

When the first operas started to play on Italian stages in the early 1600s, they were monuments to the admonition of Vincenzo Galilei (1520-1591—he is the father of the astronomer, Galileo)  to other Florentine poets and musicians of the day not to let music get in the way of the story. "Singing should be just barely distinguishable from speaking," he said.  However, such was the melodic and harmonic eloquence of such giants as Monteverdi and then the Neapolitan, Alessandro Scarlatti, that a century later the pendulum had swung completely to the other extreme. By 1700, Italian opera was about to expire from overwrought melody with banal and  plotless doggerel hanging off the music almost as an afterthought.

As a child, Metastasio was "discovered" by two literary patrons. The boy, from a modest family, was taken with wandering the streets of Rome  and improvising poetry for passers-by, a feat so impressive that the patrons convinced Trapassi's father to give them custody of the child so that he might have an education worthy of his talent. Renamed "Metastasio" (a Greek form of his real name), the boy stayed in Rome for a few years, studying the classics—and producing at the age of 12 (!) a translation of the Iliad into Italian octave stanzas  He continued his poetry improvisations so intensively that his health suffered. His guardians took him to Naples in 1718, where it was understood he would study law and put poetry aside, at least for a while.

That did not last long. Once in Naples, he began to wrote poetry again. In 1722, he wrote, upon commission, a work for the Empress Elizabeth of Austria (Naples was then in the middle of its brief existence as an Austrian vicerealm). The work was entitled Gli orti esperidi (The Gardens of Hesperides). It was set to music by Nicolò Porpora (1688-1768) one of the noted Neapolitan composers of the day. It was an immediate success. Then, in 1724 Metastasio wrote Didone abbandonata (Dido Abandoned), a work that Benedetto Croce called "the beginning of the great change in the literary merit of Italian libretti." It was set to music by Domenico Sarro and premiered at the San Bartolomeo theater in Naples in 1724. Sources claim that this first major libretto by Metastasio was more noteworthy than the music; thus, it was set to music once again, this time by another Neapolitan—and the most important Italian composer of his generation—Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) for subsequent performances in Venice and elsewhere. It met with great success, and established text once again as important in musical drama.

Metastasio took the time to study music in Naples, and was genuinely concerned about the compatibility of music and text.  He left Naples in 1728 and eventually wound up in Vienna, but from his early works in Naples, his destiny was sealed, and the legal profession lost, no doubt, a learned professor of law or whatever else might have been down that road for Metastasio. By the end of his life, not only had his texts been set to music by some 400 different European composers, but they were widely read for their literary value.

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