Letizia Calandra & Valerio Celentano - The Anonymous Neapolitan: Song Anthology from the 13th to the 19th Century (2023) [Hi-Res]

With this album The Anonymous Neapolitan Letizia Calandra’s continues her journey into ancient Naples, an inexhaustible source of timeless stories, melodies and poems. • From its origins, Neapolitan song has been linked to the life of the Neapolitan people and their innate need to express their feelings through song and poetry. In this Naples of the time of unknown authors, for at least three centuries the songs were only handed down orally and many of them were lost in the city's alleys, taverns and air. It was only in the mid-19th century that all this material was collected, transcribed and organized for the first time and the Neapolitan song became fashionable among all the Neapolitan classes and the many foreign tourists who adored it. • For this album the artists have chosen an anthology of 21 Neapolitan songs, all by anonymous authors. • It starts in ancient Greece with The Epitaph of Sicilus, found in Anatolia in 1883. It dates from the 2nd century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. and can therefore be considered the oldest complete piece of music that has come down to us. This very ancient melody retains an indescribable primal beauty. The oldest song in the Neapolitan repertoire is the Canto delle lavandaie del Vomero, whose origins date back to the 12th or 13th century. On this mysterious song, there is an exceptional testimony: it seems that the song was heard by Giovanni Boccaccio, who spent his entire adolescence in Naples (between 1327 and 1340), and who mentions it in one of his letters, impressed by its beauty. Closing the CD is an authentic masterpiece of 18th-century Neapolitan dialect literature, Lo Guarracino, written by an evidently brilliant and refined local poet, however sadly anonymous. • Letizia Calandra is widely acclaimed for the great versatility of her voice. Classically schooled and specialized in Early Music she uses her beautiful voice in an original way, which suits the popular nature of the music well. She is a foremost interpreter of classical Neapolitan Song, a perfect blend of the high and the low. On this CD she is accompanied by Valerio Celentano on guitar.