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Authors of the Neapolitan songs

Vincenzo Russo
(18th March 1876, Naples – 11th June 1904, Naples)

Italian poet and lyricist Vincenzo Russo was born in Naples, in the Mercato district, on 18th March 1876 in a poor family. His father Giuseppe was a shoemaker and illiterate, his mother Lucia Ocurbo was a housewife who raised six children of whom Vincenzo was the eldest. The harsh and humid living conditions of the old family house meant that both he and his brothers were often ill. Vincenzo Russo grew thin and pale. It was a squalid life in gloomy streets where the majority of the population was illiterate and child mortality was very high, and there were not enough primary schools, Vincenzo Russo, nevertheless, attended one of them in evening courses for workers.


In 1894 in a beerhouse on the Municipal Square (Piazza del Municipio) the eighteen-year-old Vincenzo Russo met Alberto Montagna who was the pianist of that beerhouse and, like Vincenzo, his was ill with tuberculosis. Together with Alberto Montagna, Vincenzo Russo wrote his first two songs: "'O ciardiniello mio" (My gardener) and the duet "Nce aggi' 'a penzà!" (I should think about it!).


After his father's death the entire responsibility for the maintenance of the family fell on the young Vincenzo; he mastered the profession of a glover and worked in the shop of the Partito brothers, glove makers on San Giuseppe Street, and in the evenings he worked as an usher (a theater employee who checks tickets and leads late-arriving spectators to their seats in the hall) in various theaters. In one of those theaters, Vincenzo Russo met the composer Eduardo Di Capua who played the piano there. One day Eduardo Di Capua came to visit Vincenzo Russo, who was sick in bed, in the poet's gloomy and squalid dwelling. "You have to be treated," Di Capua said. "If I don't work, everyone in this house will starve," replied the poet, exhausted by illness. They decided to write songs together. The friendship and collaboration of these two authors produced many Neapolitan songs, and their very first collaboration was the song "Chitarrata" (Guitarata) in 1897, which won second place at the Piedigrotta competition. The following year, their song "'A serenata d' 'e rrose" (The serenade of the roses) took second place again, and in 1899 their first masterpiece appeared: the song "Maria, Marì" (Maria, Maria). A year later, they wrote "Torna maggio" (May is coming back) and "I' te vurria vasà" (I would like to kiss you), the song in which Vincenzo Russo described his secret love for Henrichetta Marchese, daughter of a jeweler who lived next door. Every Sunday, on her way to church for Mass and driving past Vincenzo Russo's window, Henrichetta asked the coachman to slow down to look at the poet. Meeting the not indifferent eyes of that girl, Russo understood that his love was mutual, and wrote: I' te vurria vasà (I would like to kiss you), knowing the huge difference between social classes because of which Henrichetta's father would never agree to his daughter's marriage with a poor poet. But it was not only the difference in social status that kept him silent; it was precisely because of Russo's painful illness that he never confessed his feelings for Henrichetta.


The turn of the century, 31st December 1899, Vincenzo Russo spent in bed with a fever. 1st January 1900 Eduardo Di Capua visited him and informed him that he had received an advance from their publisher, and wanted to give him an evening at cafè-chantant (a type of musical establishment), where another Neapolitan composer Armando Gill performed his songs. Leaving the cafè-chantant, Vincenzo Russo put his poems I' te vurria vasà in Di Capua's pocket. It took Eduardo Di Capua twenty-four hours to write music for that poems, and the next day he already presented it to the poet. "I was imagining it just so," Vincenzo Russo said, "Will it be well paid for?" But this song took only the second place again.


Eduardo Di Capua and Vincenzo Russo

In June 1904, Vincenzo Russo was already very ill. He got out of bed with difficulty and went to the window to look at the church decorated with garlands of flowers. Henrichetta was getting married to another. Unable to stand on his feet any longer, he returned to bed, called his brother-in-law and asked him to take a piece of paper. Vincenzo Russo dictated his last poems to him:

For me everything is over.
Goodbye, beautiful times!
Goodbye, roses and violets,
I say goodbye to you!


which he entitled "Ll'urdema canzona mia" (My last song).


Vincenzo Russo died of tuberculosis on 11th June 1904 at the age of 28. The sheet with the text of his last song, addressed to Eduardo Di Capua, in unknown ways, ended up in the hands of Henrichetta Marchese who folded it into her locket and wore it for the rest of her days.


"New Illustrated encyclopedia of the Neapolitan Song" by Pietro Gargano
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