Naples: a City of Entertainment

Abstract

It has been said that through the centuries the Neapolitans’ ‘two refuges from suffering were music and religion’,1 and it could be added that even religion often expressed itself in music. Certainly the people had much cause for suffering, which emanated from both political events and natural disasters. Moreover, the frequency of such circumstances invalidates the statement that the years under discussion here ‘are perhaps the dullest in Italian history’,2 at least when applied specifically to Naples; on the contrary, the history of Naples in the years 1680–1740 is a lively one, and one that may be documented through its music — composed to celebrate or to alleviate, depending on one’s point of view, the consequences that politics and nature imposed on the people. The string of rulers governing Naples understood the power of entertainment to pacify their subjects; they also found such secular and religious occasions attractive themselves. Local nobility emulated them in both attitudes; and the lower classes were grateful for whatever came their way of a pleasant nature. Of all the adornments of baroque Naples, it might be said that music was the richest and was indulged in the most frequently.