Macrostrutture formali della canzone napoletana nell'Ottocento

The classic Neapolitan song represented a model for many coeval and later similar genres, such as the “Salon” romance, the tango and the modern Italian song. Of course his influence was favoured by the action of a young and efficient cultural industry, able to construct an international success around songs like Funiculì Funiculà (1880) or ‘O sole mio (1898, on the habanera rhythm). But the wide circulation of this repertoire was also due to artistic factors, to poetic and musical forms brought to perfection in the late 19th century. The verse-and-refrain song form first of all, a macro-structural scheme that was not unknown to the pre-classical Neapolitan songs (for example the famous Io te voglio bene assaje, 1835 ca.); but it became popular only since the 1880s, when it was constantly adopted by authors for the first time professionals, such as Luigi Denza Enrico De Leva, Mario Costa and Salvatore Di Giacomo. These composers and poets, also looking at the cultured tradition, raised the Neapolitan song to a very high stylistic level and developed the verse-and-refrain form, the same that would be afterwards imposed in other repertoires of song.