| main
index entry Feb.
2004
Port, Roman The palimpsest nature of
urban Naples has been made even more evident by the recent
discovery (January 2004) of the ancient port of Roman Naples. They
have always known it was down there somewhere. It turned out to be
just about where reconstructions of the city as it was during the
first century a.d. had presumed it to be—right beneath what is now Piazza Municipio (photo),
adjacent
to the Angevin Fortress, the Maschio
Angioino, 100 yards or so in from the modern coastline and way
down beneath the manmade landfill and rubble of 2000 years of
history and the natural accumulation of 2000 years of mudslides and
other geology.Construction for the Piazza Municipio station of the new underground train line had already unearthed more recent items, bits of structures that were plowed under in the 1890s to rebuild the square; then they found the old (meaning 400 years) outer walls of the nearby fortress. Now, beneath all that, archaeologists have brought to light a 30–foot Roman vessel and abundant pottery, sure signs that this was the Roman port. The expectation had been that they would find something sooner or later as the subway builders continued to dig and move east along the line of the old Roman (and Greek) wall. The next station down the line at Piazza Nicola Amore, still under construction, has now yielded the remains of an impressive imperial villa, the site of the Roman Isolympic Games. Obviously, there is much left to be uncovered. This leaves archaeologists ecstatic; people who have to get to and from work, however, have mixed feelings. They are already impatient with subway construction that is months behind schedule. Workers doing the actual building of the new train line are also uncertain about this turn of events; whenever history and the needs of the modern city come into conflict—as they do quite often in Naples—those who dig and build generally have to stand aside and lean on the their shovels until the archaeologists get finished mumbling and cataloging. In the case of a 30-foot wooden boat that has to be delicately excavated, at least some workers may be sent home—laid off—for a while. [Also see The Ancient Port of Neapolis] to portal for Underground Naples to main index entry Feb.
2004
Scarfoglio, Edoardo
(1860–1917); Realism
(lit.) The direct language of
the
literary movements known as "Realism" and "Naturalism" of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the result of many
political and social processes. Among these were the growth of a
middle class, the rise in literacy, and the theories of Marx and
Darwin, which called for exacting statements and description. This
"democratization" of literature—the need to write about and for new
social classes (and old ones not written about before), to write
about the real lives of real people in the plain, unadorned
language of everyday life—led to Zola, Verga, Stephen Crane,
Dreiser, and D.H. Lawrence.Such directness occurs late and rather suddenly in Italian literature. Edoardo Scarfoglio was from Paganica in Abruzzo but lived and worked in Naples much of his life. He was among those Italian writers who started to write short fiction (the novella) in the late 1800s and then longer fiction, novels, a form ignored before then by Italian authors, largely bound, as they were (until Manzoni), to classical literary forms. Scarfoglio was successful early in life; he was in his 20s when he could be said to have "made it" as a writer of short, realist fiction, particularly with the publication of The Trial of Phryne in 1884. For whatever reason—perhaps because journalism was the natural vehicle for everyday language—he gave up "literature" and dedicated the rest of his life to journalism. He married the most prominent Italian woman writer of the day, Matilde Serao. Together they founded a number of newspapers, among which was Il Mattino, still the largest Neapolitan daily. Together, they moved Naples out of the backwaters and into the mainstream of Italian journalism; they provided space for some of Italy's fine talent of the day by serializing such writers as D'Annunzio. Scarfoglio's narrative skills are best seen in the novella, mentioned above: The Trial of Phryne. It is a retelling—set in small-town Italy of the late nineteenth century—of the trial of Phryne, a Greek courtesan from the fourth century, b.c. She was on trial for blasphemy. Her life was at stake and ultimately saved by her lawyer's appeal to the Greek concept that the Good, True, and Beautiful were inseparable and that such a Beautiful defendant must, therefore, be Good and True. She bared her breasts to the jury and was roundly and firmly acquitted. Sociologists use this episode to speak of such things as the rhetoric of silence in women's judicial supplication, and rhetoric as a "craft of logos," where technique determines outcome, emerging as an indeterminate act outside Western definitions of rhetorical process. The rest of us think of it in terms of, "Listen, sweetheart—smile, look beautiful, and keep your mouth shut." Scarfoglio's Phryne is a young village beauty by the name of Mariantonia, guilty of poisoning her mother–in-law. Italians who have not read Scarfoglio know the episode anyway from the film version, one part of Alessandro Blasetti's 1952 episodic film, Altri Tempi (Other Times), starring Vittorio De Sica as the lawyer and Gina Lollobrigida as Phryne/Mariantonia. In his appeal to the court, De Sica says, "Does not the law of our land state that the mentally handicapped be acquitted? Why then should such a physically endowed creature as this magnificent woman beside me not be acquitted, too?" As a writer and literary critic Scarfoglio advocated the liberation of Italian literature from French influence. As an editorialist, he supported such things as Italian expansionism in Africa and the Aegean in the 1890s. Indeed, one finds this reference to him in a lengthy article on "The Italians in Africa" in a copy of The Fortnightly Review from October, 1896:
That was written by an Englishman during the heydey of British imperialism. Clearly, what was sauce for the English goose was not meant for the swarthy Italian gander. Scarfoglio had insatiable wanderlust, at one point lamenting his life as a "hack journalist" and claiming that had been born to "hunt elephants on the banks of the Omo and sail amidst the fissures of the polar ice-pack." Aboard his vessel, Claretta, he sailed at least to the eastern shores of Greece and coastal Turkey. From his ship, he wrote Letters to Lydia, passionate prose disclosing his affair with the actress Lydia Gautier. He separated from his wife, Matilde Serao, in 1902 and died in 1917. He is the father of Neapolitan journalist, Edoardo Scarfoglio. to main index entry Feb.
2004
Scarpetta, Eduardo
(1853-1925) The life of Eduardo
Scarpetta, one of Naples' best-loved comic playwrights, reads
almost like one of his own many farces and romantic slapstick
comedies. His life was full of improbable situations and
exaggerated characters, of which he, himself, was one. Suffice it
to say that he is best-known as the father of three illegitimate
children: the De Filippos—Eduardo, Peppino, and Titina, who grew up
to
be the most famous theatrical family of the twentieth century in
Naples. Their mother—follow closely—was the niece of Scarpetta's
wife. He also had three legitimate children with his own wife,
unless one of them was really fathered by Victor Emanuel II, King
of Italy, as rumor had it. Ha! The plot thickens. Or maybe thins;
that could be any one of a number of plays from Paris in the late
1800s in which there are always fewer closets and beds than there
are lovers trying to hide in and under them.Scarpetta did not come from a theatrical family but was on the stage by the age of four. He worked almost exclusively at the San Carlino theater in Naples, where he created a character that became his stage alter-ego (say, in the same way that the Tramp was synonymous with Charlie Chaplin): Felice Sciosciammocca, a typical, good-natured Neapolitan, just trying to get by. The name "Sciosciammocca" translates from Neapolitan to "breath in mouth"—thus, with "Felice" (Happy) you get something like open-mouthed, wide-eyed and perhaps a bit scatter-brained. The character was a break with the traditional portrayal of the Neapolitan streetwise Everyman and, as an implied stereotype, draws immediate comparison to the well-known, historical Neapolitan "mask" of Pulcinella. Scarpetta's character, however, has none of the barbed wisdom of Pulcinella—nor was it meant to. One story says that Scarpetta, as a child, was terrified by an on-stage appearance of Pulcinella. Scarpetta's grandson, Mario, has commented that the figure of Sciosciammocca, at the time, seemed to be more of what Naples was about (or trying to be about) than did the darker character of Pulcinella. Naples was no longer the capital of an old-line absolutist kingdom. It had recently been taken up into united Italy; it had strivings away from treachery and intrigue, and towards the cosmopolitan and urbane. There was nothing of Pulcinella's cryptic mocking behind Sciosciammocca's "mask"—no psychology. He wore no mask. He was the light, modern, nineteenth-century Neapolitan male, with not even a trace of the tragic Chaplinesque clown—in a way, almost a throwforward to, say, something like Jack Lemmon's character in Some Like it Hot. Totò as Felice Sciosciammocca  Scarpetta dedicated much
of
his early activity to translating into Neapolitan the standard
Parisian farce comedy of the day, such as Hennequin, Meylhac,
Labiche and Feydeau. His own original comedies comprise some 50
works, the best-known of which is probably Miseria e Nobiltà (Misery
and
Nobility) from the year 1888. The work is well known, too, as a
1954 film featuring the great Totò
as Felice Sciosciammocca; the film also features the young Sophia
Loren. The plot, roughly, involves poverty-stricken Felice and his
friend, don Pasquale, masquerading as aristocratic relatives of a
young woman in order to get her parents approval for a marriage to
a young prince. The ploy works, of course, and Felice and don
Pasquale are rewarded. They splurge on a feast, and the last scene
in the film has Felice, don Pasquale, and the rest of the famished
family scrambling onto the kitchen table to shove food into their
mouths (photo, left). It is this type of nonsensical slapstick that
irked Scarpetta's intellectual critics at the turn of the century.
They wanted social commentary. Scarpetta just wanted to make people
laugh. He wrote his last work in 1909 and passed away in 1925.to main index entry Feb.
2004
Solimena, Francesco
(1657-1743) Along with his great
predecessor, Luca Giordano, Solimena
is the best-known painter of the Neapolitan Baroque.The easiest
painting by Solimena to find in Naples is in the Church of Gesù
Nuovo (located in the square of the
same name), but you might actually miss it if you go into the
church for the reason that you should go into a church. That is to
say, you have to go in and turn your back on the faithful and look
directly above the entrance to see the massive and spectacular The Expulsion of Heliodorus
from
the Temple. Even a graphic dunce such as myself
(anti-references available upon request!) notices Solimena's
signature characteristics—light and color, from the white charger
in the middle to the splashes of the bright blue robes. I don't
know why artsy types of the day didn't like it; perhaps it was too
"busy" (it is indeed jammed) or perhaps not sombre enough. Indeed,
descriptions of Solimena's works abound in vocabulary such as
"golden light," "lovely harmonies of colour," "brilliant
luminosity," "vibrant, atmospheric light," etc.Other of his works in Naples include The Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios, in the Capodimonte museum; The Trinity, the Madonna and St Dominic, in the sacristy of San Domenico Maggiore; and various frescoes in the churches of San Paolo Maggiore and San Domenico Maggiore. His self-portrait (here shown) is in the Museum of San Martino. He is responsible, as well, for the frescoes on the ceiling of the royal bedroom in the Royal Palace, put there to celebrate the marriage of Charles III (the first Bourbon king of the then newly independent Kingdom) to Maria Amalia of Saxony in 1737. Solimena had a long and very successful career and was, at the height of his powers, one of the most sought-after painters in the Europe of his day. to main index entry Feb.
2004
Theaters, First in
Naples You don't have to be an eagle–eyed observer
to notice how
many old churches there are in Naples. That is not surprising in a
place where, according to some claims, in the year 1700 one out of
every ten Neapolitans was a cleric.Also noticeable in Naples are the many old churches that are closed. Some of them were holes in the wall even when they were built; they certainly could not have served very large congregations. But not all of the closed churches are small ones; there are some very large houses of worship in Naples that are closed—for example, the gigantic church of the Gerolamini in the historic center of the city not far from the cathedral of Naples. Less impressive in size, but still noteworthy is the church of San Giorgio dei Genovesi (photo) on via Medina between the City Hall and the main police station. There is no longer even a sign on the front to indicate the name of the church, although there is a recent sign indicating that the premises are now the site of something called the University Chapel. In any event, I have never seen the building open. The church was built in 1587, which makes it old in some places in the world but not in Naples; it stands next to a church that was, in fact, built 300 years earlier. For whatever its value has been to the faithful over the centuries, San Giorgio dei Genovesi is at least as interesting in the secular history of the city, since it was built on the site of the very first commercial theater in Naples. When the Spanish moved into Naples in 1500, making the city and all of southern Italy part of the great Spanish Empire, they brought with them their cultural institutions—for example, the large church-run orphanages that trained children in music (the first "conservatories"). Another example—the case, here—theaters: venues where the first troupes of professional actors could present themselves in the art of the comedy. The theater is referred to in documents of the period (the mid-1500s) as, simply, la commedia. (The later church on the same site was then popularly called San Giorgo alla commedia vecchia [old theater]. The theater was the professional home to acting troupes from Spain "playing the provinces," and it provided a stage for the improvised antics of the masked and costumed figures in the then innovative Italian Commedia dell'arte. Such characters included the famous Neapolitan stereotype character, Pulcinella.  The property where the la commedia stood was
purchased by members of the Genoese community in Naples for a new
church. Then, in the first decade of the 1600s, "show business"
continued in a new theater built to replace la commedia. This was the Teatro dei Fiorentini, an
establishment
that continued through the centuries of demolition and rebuilding
in the immediate area and even today still exists in its more
recent incarnation as a cinema and, now a bingo hall (photo, left).
The other major theater from the same period in Naples was the theater of San Bartolomeo, built
in
1620 and redone in the 1640s in order to accommodate the first
performances of the "new music" from the north—early opera. San
Bartolomeo would then function until it was replaced by the grand theater of San Carlo in 1737.Between San Bartolomeo and San Carlo in time stands the Teatro Nuovo, built in 1724 on via Montecalvario in the Spanish Quarter of Naples. It was the brain-child of Giacomo De Laurentis and Angelo Carasale (the latter went on to greater things as one of the architects of San Carlo). The architect of the Teatro Nuovo was Domenico Antonio Vaccaro. There is an extant document from 1780 that shows the theater to have been somewhat small by today's standards, with a seating capacity of just over 200. That puts it in a class of earlier theaters, a mold not broken until Charles III decided to build San Carlo a decade later. The building still stands and was a cinema for many years. It has reopened as a theater under the name of "Nuovo teatro nuovo." to main index entry Feb.
2004
Verdi and San Carlo In January, 2004, the San
Carlo
Theater put to right a bit of
Bourbon censorship 145 years after the fact. Opera-goers, used to
seeing Un Ballo in
Maschera by Giuseppe Verdi, will be able to see the original
version with the original name, Gustavo
III,
una
vendetta
in
domino. I
have heard that the original has been done elsewhere, but no one I
have spoken to—none of my opera-addicted friends and relatives—has
ever seen that version.The first 20 years of Verdi's very long career as a composer were between 1840-60, a period that corresponded to a period of great social turmoil in the Kingdom of Naples. It is, thus, not surprising that Verdi—one of the great voices for Italian unity—would not get along very well with the absolutist Bourbon kings of Naples. At least a few of Verdi's early operas were presented at San Carlo almost as soon as they were composed: Oberto, conte di S. Bonifacio; and a comic opera entitled Il finto Stanislao. Then, Alzira, a piece set in Peru, actually premiered in Naples in 1845. All of these were uncontroversial as to political content and sailed by the censors in Naples with no problem. All of those works have remained obscure to this day. (Alzira did give Verdi, however, the chance to work with the greatest Neapolitan librettist of the day, Salvatore Cammarano, author of the libretti for a number of Donizetti's operas. Verdi and Cammarano collaborated on three other works: The Battle of Legnano, Luisa Miller, and Il Trovatore.) Luisa Miller premiered in Naples in 1849. To fulfill his contract with San Carlo, Verdi had been planning an opera called Maria de' Ricci, based on a medieval siege of Florence, very much in keeping with his timely preoccupation with freedom and revolution. The censors didn't want any part of any siege of any Florence, so Verdi and Cammarano came up with Luisa Miller, based on Schiller’s play, Kabale und Liebe. It is strange to me that the censors let Nabucco pass at all, even after almost a decade. It was composed in 1840 and played in San Carlo in 1848, the year of great revolutions throughout Europe. The theme of liberty—indeed, even the unofficial national anthem of early Italian unity, Va pensiero sull'ali dorate—got by the censors. Maybe the far away and long ago setting seemed as innocuous to them as Peru had seemed in Alzira.  By 1857, Naples was only two years away
from being invaded by Garibaldi and taken up into united Italy. The
Bourbons were very defensive about their monarchy. If the
censors had not liked potential revolution lurking in any of
Verdi's earlier works, imagine their reaction when Giuseppe showed
up with an opera about the assassination of Swedish monarch, Gustav
III, in 1792, murdered by aristocratic conspirators afraid of their
enlightened king's potential open-mindedness to the ideals of the
French Revolution. An opera about regicide
(!) in a kingdom that had
experienced three revolutions in the previous 40 years? We don't
think so.Even after the opera about Gustavo III had been watered down to Un Ballo in Maschera and the European king had been turned into a 17th-century governor of Boston (!), the censors still didn't like it; it had to premiere in Rome in 1859. Shortly thereafter, what Neapolitan censors thought or didn't think became moot—along with the rest of the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. Verdi did have a bit of on-the-spot revenge at the fall of the kingdom of Naples. His Battle of Legnano was actually running in January of 1861 at San Carlo, while Bourbon forces were on their last legs in Gaeta just up the coast. (The opera program for 1860/61 had nothing to do with the Bourbons, however. Garibaldi had taken Naples in September, 1860. He liked Verdi, and an opera about a battle?—while the real deal was going on just a few miles away? That's too good to be true!) The traditional, non-Swedish Un Ballo in Maschera played in 1862, but 2004 will be the first time that the original Gustavo III has played in Naples. I have a feeling that any number of opera-goers are going to walk by San Carlo, look up at the posters and say: "Hmmmm, Gustavo III. Verdi. Gee, I never heard of that one." * Who knows. Maybe this is a good sign. Riccardo, the tenor, Count of Warwick and Governor of Boston can take a break after all these years *note: San Carlo is taking no chances. The posters tell you in fine print that Gustavo III is the original version of Un ballo in maschera, and that the opera was originally meant to be premiered in Naples. to main index entry Feb.
2004
Viviani, Raffaele
(1888-1950) The bread and butter
of many Neapolitan dialect writers, actors and musicians,
especially in the early twentieth century, was portraying the seamy
reality of Naples, the hard-core world of petty crime,
prostitution, and poverty—the underclass grind. Raffaele Viviani
stands between Salvatore di Giacomo
(1860-34) and Eduardo de Filippo
(1900-84) chronologically as well as stylistically, his work
generally having pretensions neither to the erudition of the former
nor the humor of the latter. Viviani is what critics call "an
autodidact realist," meaning he acquired his considerable skills as
an actor, playwright and musician at the school of hard knocks.Viviani was born in Castellemmare of a poor family. He appeared at the age of 4 on the stage in Naples, lost his father at 12, and took over the care of his mother and the rest of the family. By the age of 20, he had a solid stage reputation throughout Italy. As a young actor, he also played in Budapest, Paris, Tripoli, and throughout South America. His plays are in the "anti-Pirandello" style; that is, they are less concerned with the psychology of people than with the lives they lead, in this case the human stories of the common people of Naples. Perhaps his best known work is L'ultimo scugnizzo (The Last scugnizzo) (1931), scugnizzo being the underclass Neapolitan street kid, who lives by his wits on the fringes of legality. In this case, the "last scugnizzo" tries to adjust to a more normal adult life, almost makes it, but reverts to his earlier self as a result of a personal tragedy. Viviani was a good musician, as well, and composed songs and incidental music for many of his earlier works. One such well-known melodrama is "via Toledo di notte," a work from 1918 in which Viviani reprises some of his earlier melodies and even employs American cake-walk and ragtime rhythms to tell the story of the "street people" of via Toledo, the most famous thoroughfare in Naples. It is presented in the form of a succession of songs with little or no linking dialogue and with only a few instruments as accompaniment. Thus, it was a somewhat anomalous form for Italian musical theater of the day. English terminology has used "music drama" to describe such items. Viviani, himself, described it as a "Commedia in un atto (versi, prosa e musica)." The disastrous Italian defeat at Caporetto in 1917 in WWI led to a reappraisal in Italy of national values and a subsequent crackdown on such frivolities as musical theater and vaudeville. This austerity led Viviani to concentrate more and more on straight drama, a trend that he continued until the end of life. During the Fascist era, he also had to contend with the regime's hostility towards theatrical works presented in regional dialects rather than the national standard language. Viviani persisted and has been vindicated; all in all, however, he is not as well known outside of Italy as he deserves to be. Jane House Productions will present a US premiere of his Via Toledo di Notte at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York in late 2004. A edition of the complete theatrical works of Viviani was published by Guida in 1987. [A plaque (photo, above) marks Viviani's home on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Naples. As well, a nearby public park was opened about 10 years ago and named in his honor.] to main index entry Feb.
2004
Women's Journals in Naples in
the
19th Century The drive to encourage
literacy among women in southern Italy started under Ferdinand IV
in the late 1700s. Certainly, there are a number of examples of
women poets and scholars at the Bourbon court from that period, the
most outstanding example of whom is Eleonora
Fonseca Pimentel, classical scholar,
poet, and "Passionaria" of the Neapolitan revolution and Republic
of 1799—a role for which she paid with her life.With the coming of the French decade (1806-10) in Naples, the drive continued, and the years leading up to the Risorgimento and unification of Italy produced a number of publications in Naples, some of them aimed directly at women. One of the best private libraries in Naples, the Biblioteca Patria Storia (on the grounds of the Maschio Angioino) is dedicated exclusively to local history—meaning the city of Naples as well as the historic Kingdom of Naples. Part of their collection is dedicated to those women's journals published in Naples in the 1800s. I have taken what follows from the library's descriptions of those journals. (Further details at this library webpage.) — Le cesta de' fiori per le dame (A Women's Flower Basket) was published one time only in 1835. It was 98 pages of anecdotes, poetry, and stories, some with the explicit theme of women's literacy, such as this excerpt, which has the protagonist saying: "..great princes and men of distinction owe their superiority to the first lessons they received from the mothers...Give attention to the education of women if you want to have men of courage. [...] When we say "education", we don't mean music, dance, painting and foreign languages. [...] We mean all their talents..." —Un Comitato di Donne (Women's Committee) (eleven issues in 1848) was a political journal dedicated to the constitutional struggles of the day. (In 1848, the movement for constitutional reform swept much of Europe; in Italy, it was the beginning of the Risorgimento, the move to unite Italy.) The Comitato published articles and commentary about the role of women in the move for Italian unity and independence, including the need for women to participate actively in military action. — Il lume a gas (Gas lamp), published daily from November 1848 through June 1849. It was originally dedicated to items of humor and human interest and had little or no political axe to grind. As the constitutional questions in the south of Italy came to a head, however, the paper took a moderate editorial stand in favor constitutional government. It praised the role of women in the wars of liberation going on in the far north of the Italian peninsula, but, strangely, was sarcastic in dealing with that same role in the south. It printed some satire aimed at the Comitato di Donne (above) and the idea of squads of Neapolitan women actually bearing arms. —Il Sibilo was a "scientific, literary, artistic and industrial journal", published weekly for the entire year of 1845. Each issue consisted of eight pages of miscellany, including serialized stories, human interest, and editorial emphasis on the importance of the education of women. —Vittoria Colonna was a literary and artistic journal for women published in Naples in 1846 and 1847 "under the auspices of the Queen Mother". Twenty-one issues appeared. The journal was inspired by and named for the great Renaissance poet, Michelangelo's sketch of whom appears at the top of this entry. (Click here for a separate entry on Vittoria Colonna.) —Then, later, during the last days of the Kingdom of Naples, there appeared La donna italiana 1860, Giornaletto per le dame (The Italian Woman 1860, a magazine for women). Only the first issue from August 8, 1860, is extant, and it is not clear if subsequent issues came out. The editorial thrust seems to have been the involvement of women in the great patriotic battle then looming to unite Italy. Commentary was addressed to "women of Italy", leading one to believe that it was a pro-unity paper—and, thus, anti-Bourbon. From the publication date, Garibaldi was only one month away from taking Naples, the capital of the Bourbon kingdom; thus, there could not have been much room for an anti-government magazine at the time. No wonder it appeared only once. to main index |