The musical genius who told Naples

Farewell to Roberto De Simone: the cultured and popular voice of Naples.

Roberto De Simone He left at 91 in his Naples, leaving a deep and unbridgeable void in the world of Italian culture. Musician, composer, director, anthropologist, writer, but above all witness and custodian of the deepest roots of the South, De Simone has dedicated all his existence to the enhancement of popular tradition, combining research and poetry, rigor and passion.

Roberto De Simone: the beginnings between cultured music and popular culture in Naples

Born on August 25, 1933 in the heart of the Spanish neighborhoods, to the Pignasecca, De Simone embodied the cultural ferment of a lively Naples, contradictory and ancestral from a very young age. Formed at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella, where he also held the role of director, he soon abandoned the concert activity to devote himself to the study of popular expressiveness and composition.

In 1967 he founded the New Popular Singing Company together with Eugenio Bennato, Giovanni Mauriello, Peppe Barra And other protagonists of what will be a real musical revolution. The group will ferry an ancient Naples in the squares and theaters, made of villanelle, Moresche, tammurriate, but also of denunciation and social awareness.

Success with Gatta Cinderella

National and international success arrives in 1976 with The Cinderella cata work inspired by the fairy tale of Basile and presented at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. Defined by the same author as “a new and ancient melodrama”, the work quickly becomes a cult, capable of speaking to the young audience of those years with an archaic but powerly contemporary language.

Theater, regions and acknowledgments

But De Simone's contribution goes far beyond the musical theater: he was the artistic director of San Carlo Theater From 1981 to 1987, he signed work regions in the most important European theaters and composed works such as Requiem for Pier Paolo Pasolini (1985), Eleonora (1999), Cholera (2003), The beautiful king (2004). In 1998 he was appointed Academician of Santa Ceciliaand in 2019 he received the title of Knight of Grand Croce.

Its endless production also includes a vast nonsense corpus: from the texts published for Einaudi Until studies on the Fairy Tales and the Neapolitan song. De Simone has investigated the intangible heritage of a pre -industrial civilization, highlighting its expressive strength and ritual complexity, in a recovery work that has influenced generations of artists, scholars and enthusiasts.

Roberto De Simone in Naples the funeral

The funeral will be held on Wednesday in Cathedral of Napleswith mid -auction flags and the Hard room at the San Carlo Theater. A public farewell for a man who made culture his horizon and memory an act of love for his land.

Roberto De Simone It was not just an intellectual: it was a voice. And that voice will continue to resonate everywhere there is someone willing to listen to the stories of the South.