© Jeff
Matthews entry 2006
Mario Merola (1934-2006)
Every
nation has persons who are cultural icons; when
they pass away, a light simply goes out in that
nation. Even an entire age can be said to pass away
with such a person —Tennyson in England and Verdi in
Italy, for example. At a local level, there are
persons who so embody a local culture that they become
known nationally and, perhaps, internationally, such
that a much wider public than just a city or region
feels the loss. In Naples, playwright Eduardo de Filippo, singer Roberto Murolo, and the great
comic Totò (Antonio de Curtis)
were just such icons. Indeed, their popularity
throughout Italy is the main reason that most
Italians, rightly or wrongly, think that they speak at
least some Neapolitan! (This, perhaps, in the same
sense that most people in the United States think they
know a little Yiddish because of the great popularity
of Jewish comics in the US culture over the years.
Even a Southern Baptist knows what "Oy, vey!" means.)
Yet, there is another level, a strictly
local level, that provides a local culture with icons
that they share with no one else. In Naples, Mario
Merola was such a person. When he died in November
2006—though the event was but briefly noted elsewhere
in Italy, the entire city of Naples simply stopped for
a day or two. The greatest modern exponent of the
characteristically Neapolitan musical drama known as
the sceneggiata had died
and that deserved a pause in the day's occupation.
Forty-thousand persons jammed the square at the Carmine church at Piazza
Mercato for his funeral.
Mario Merola was born poor, one of the
Neapolitan underclass, and in the eyes of the
thousands of Neapolitans who shared —and still share—
that fate, he represented them well. He rejuvenated
the sceneggiata
in an age when such musical melodrama was widely
viewed as overly sentimental and in a city where
people would like to forget that the underclass is
still very much entrenched even in this great new 21st
century. Merola held various day jobs early in his
career, including as a longshoreman at the port of
Naples until one of his songs, Malu Figliu,
was used successfully in a sceneggiata, moving
him into the limelight. He was at the height of his
popularity in the 1970s and 80s. He recorded
approximately 40 CDs of sceneggiata music and
has extensive credits in filmed versions of the
dramas. He also toured abroad with a Neapolitan
company to bring the sceneggiata to emigrant
Italian communities elsewhere.
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