Bovio Libero
A philosopher's child with republican (from here his name) ideologies and of a good pianist, Free Bovio was born June 8 th 1883 in Naples. Even if it frequented the university courses of Medicine it never reached the degree because impassioned of theater in language. In fact its first realization goes up again to 1902, as soon as nineteen year-old. Died his/her father you/he/she was exhorted to be an employment that allowed his maintenance. Before in a local (Don marzio) daily paper then to the National Museum in Naples up to become manager of the office Exports, jobs that will allow him to write a lot.
It enjoys of an uproarious popularity and the anecdotes they tell some scenes of real enthusiasm to his/her passage for the roads of the city. With the cigarette always among the lips one become well soon some greatest characters in the Naples of beginning century. Love, joy and pain continually alternate him in its production and in its life. Always ready to the wisecracks, in possession of a great communicability for a long time a stimulating interlocutor represents in the living rooms in a Naples to the search of his/her identity.
Huge the variety of the themes, always treated with folksy immediateness, also in the poetries not destined to the music. Because, if it is true that as author of everlasting verses remembers him, you/he/she is also true that was poet that, also writing in vernacular, you/he/she underlined conditions and themes common to the great poets of the Italian and European decadence. His/her poetry, "Vespero", you/he/she is for instance founded, and occupied by the theme of the loneliness, which finds again him, as it is known, in the poets of the our Nine hundred with the same connected connotations to the contemplation surprised of the landscape to the transience of the life and the childish search of the language of the nature. It was journalist, author of theater and novelliere. The titles, many and all unforgettable ones, are: "Passion", "Silence cantatore", "Chiove", "Guapparia", "Signorinella." The musicians were the teachers Gaetano Lama, Nicola Valente, And. Nardella, And. de Curtis, Rodolfo Falvo, etc. In the Neapolitan song Bovio also invented the dramatic kind. You tells that a day off Bovio, in the center of the musical house "You canzonetta" of Francis Feola, sat to the desk, he/she read to Mario Spera, manager of the homonym magazine, one new lyric of his. A fascist gerarchetto enters, sent by the federal one to inform the poet that Edmondo Rossoni had arrived a tall exponent of the party, which desired to see him/it; it advances up to the desk and pronunciation with a lot of haughtiness his/her name preceded by the degree. Bovio, that wants to finish the reading of the poetry, tells him: "Seized you a chair." The gerarchetto, with offended tone, it says: "You have not understood who am?" And it repeats his/her own name and degree. And Bovio without lifting the head: "Ah!... Then seized you ddoi segge!".
Thanks to companies of prose it will do after all to know to the whole Italy his/her one man show inexhaustible poetic vein as that of the whole city. Then forced by an illness to confine him in the house, as definitive poetic action of love it devotes his/her last song to his/her companion: Goodbye Maria.
To pick up the inheritance his/her child Aldo, journalist de "The Morning" and author over that of songs and screen-plays of sonorous columns. Organizer and director from many years it represents the pole of numerous artistic demonstrations of the city.
carulì Carulì; 'To song 'and Napule; Nun volio ago nothing; Sona guitar; Tarantella luciana; Carufanella; Guapparia; Grandmother grandmother; You ca nun chiagne; Fron' 'and cerase; Regginella; Ncoppa 'to ll'onna; Brinneso; Silence cantatore; Chiove; Lacreme napulitane; 'Or country of 0 'or sun; Tarantella scugnizza; Hoer; Guappo song'io; Passion.
Ettore de Walls up - Encyclopedia of the Neapolitan Song
Publishing house The Press, Naples 1969
LIBERO BOVIO
Free Bovio was not alone a great poet: it was the greatest poet of the Neapolitan song. If Giacomo's Savior - always assembled on himself - he/she already wrote verses ch'erano music, difficult to dress again of notes, the most generous Bovio lined tall yet well proper rhymes for to favor the job of the composer. Here is the secret of the harmony.
The talent of Bovio sprouted to the beginning of the Nine hundred and at the end of the gold ventennio of the song, when it was given for dead this extraordinary expression of popular art. It saved the song, it held her/it in life, it reformed her/it. It was one of the so many ways according to which it honored the lesson of his/her/their father Giovanni, philosopher of the democracy and lost example of morality in the public and private life.
Its lyric and ironic, overflowing and chaste genius, dominated on an environment full of rhetoric, dripping tears. His/her a marvelous sentence: "The adjective is the solo responsible of all the human iniquities." Having had the gift to make to be understood and to make himself/herself/themselves love from the people, succeeded in combining clarity and culture: a democrat as his/her father.
Lligi Pirandello wrote to the wife of Bovio, Maria, that Silence cantatore was worth how much its Six characters looking for author. Naples has not made to Bovio as many honor but him if it waited for him: "Naples all bears and it forgives except the talent" he/she annotated, mocking.
The absorbed ones without fear in the humors of the city and them sorvolò. To the time of the war, also without desertions, in 'To war and Song 'and surdate sang the true face of the front: mournings and pain. To the time of the emigrants, when all sang of distant nostalgias, he gave body instead to the suffering and the injustice: I'so' meat 'and maciello: I know' emigrant poetò in Lacreme napulitane.
Perfectionist, chose the musicians and the singers of its songs. Later, too many have made him blame, for instance interpreting with a smile Guapparia, that is the play of a man and an environment to the opposite one. Too many have held only Hoer one, while, to the opposite one, it is the report, in three minutes, of the end of the country world, it is the lightening perception of the appearing on the surface egoism - of the consumerism - from which our days are wound.
"To make a good song nce vo' done nu dinto" it said, but the concreteness of the inspiration ever braked the transparency of an extraordinarily ample vein.
It was among the creators of the Italian song, Reginella, Signorinella. It showed possible to make Neapolitan theater of art without vulgar laughters or impudichi sobs. He/she wrote uproarious epigrams. All of his/her life, all of its art, was lightness. You take a least episode the court served him as the actress Dirce Marella. To a ticket of the lady - "Pursue me, I am the shade" - he/she answered "I am not able, I hold the calluses": it was the way to render less dramatic a refusal, even elegant in the apparent prosiness.
Uq él living room of street Cathedral his/her child Aldo preserves lines of a stave of Pietro Mascagni that, to the piano of house, he/she sketched a hymn to the job and churches to Bovio to affix you pour you. Freed Don wrote: "Or worker, be blessed / quanno you stienne 'ncoppa to nu lietto." Two verses, a lesson of solidarity for the one that work, undressed of every rhetoric. Great, huge.
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