Performing Naples

The rediscovery of a unique, powerful and today almost unknown European music scene through the rare and never-before-seen photographs of its performers.

Since the 1880s, Neapolitan Song entered a new phase of popularity that further amplified its impact. Neapolitan songs were eagerly listened to, played and recorded worldwide, by following what many thought was then an irresistible musical ‘fashion’. In Performing Naples Goffredo Plastino explores for the first time the visual evidence of this global phenomenon: the photographs depicting itinerant musicians published in Europe as picture postcards. Self-produced by the bands for their promotion, printed by the venues or distributed during large-scale events, the photographs testified to the thriving vitality of a substantial music market. These fragile and rare ephemera embodied a figurative tradition shared between the singers, the players and their audiences, related to a well-established European ideal representation of the Neapolitans dating back to the 18th century. Unknown and startling, the images collected in this unique volume reveal to our gaze a performance culture long gone and all but forgotten, attesting to the essential role of photography in music iconography.

• By (author) Goffredo Plastino