153 senses and the city Sounds, sounds everywhere. From the ears down into the belly, along the sides, and then up again, in your throat and between the lips. Automatically your feet start to hit the ground, while hands and head keep time. But how could you stay still in Naples? In here, also the colors make noise and melody: Roxy In The Box tells you this through her Maria Callas from Montesanto; Caravaggio told you this four centuries ago, creating the most astonishing and effective manifesto of the Town's synaesthesia, through that unique vision of the Seven Works of Mercy set in an alley tumultuous for life. Chatter and laughter until night, decibels shot from car radios, melismatic virtuosities from open balconies, fireworks, processions. Tammurriate and tarantellas keep ancestral dances alive, calls of sellers echoing Mediterranean and Oriental sounds. Furthermore, Neapolitan is a flexible and naturally musical language, with which sooner or later everyone engages, either by whim or profession. How many Neapolitan songs are there? As many as the Gulf waves, one would answer. Because there are not only the classic ones, intangible heritage so universally known as to rise to Italian national anthem [for one thing: in 1920, at the Olympics in Antwerp, the band intoned ‘O sole mio instead of the Royal March to greet a tricolor gold medal]. Or the crowded pop, rock, neomelodic, rap, trap, dub, hip hop and whatnot scenario. Problem is, here everything is soon digested, and there is no hit from which a parody or cover in vernacular cannot be derived. In short, the great poet and lyricist Libero Bovio was right when he wrote «e so’ Napulitano e, si nun canto, i' moro5». Therefore if the world is theatre, Naples is a stage, history and vocation. For centuries. Capital of music in the 18th century, a beacon for singers, librettists and composers from all over Europe. Here, thanks to the existence of four Conservatories established in the 16th century, a prolific School was born and stars the likes of Pergolesi, Porpora, Vinci, Mercadante, Leo, Jommelli, Scarlatti, Piccinni were glowing, as well as those of the castrati Caffariello and Farinelli. In 1737 the San Carlo Theatre was inaugurated, the oldest opera house still active in the world. In 1770 a very young Mozart arrived, who would have immortalised his brief stay in the city twenty years later, when in Così fan tutte he would have painted by means of the seven notes the most beautiful gouache on Naples ever made. Besides, the Neapolitan brand was also successful in exports: at the end of the Age of Enlightenment, Paisiello and Cimarosa emigrated to the court of Catherine II in St. Petersburg. In the 19th century it was the turn of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi. I mean, if you didn't play in Naples, if you didn't compose for Naples, you were nobody. Instead, let’s assume that someone wish to take it easy. The best thing is to take refuge in a cloister: Girolamini, San Gregorio Armeno and Santa Chiara will immediately put a filter between you and the chaos out there. There is still a place to rest your hearing, and it is the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station at the Public Garden, the oldest in Europe it too, among those still existing. The aquarium-silence equation may sound a little cliché, but in this specific case it is not quite accurate: in fact, at this latitude, they managed to make the fish sing as well. Hard to believe? Listen to the song of the guarracino6, and we'll talk later. 5 Tr. «but I am Neapolitan and, if I can’t sing, I could die» 6 Guarracino is a black fish that lives close to the coast or under the cliffs
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