When I studied in Naples at the Biblioteca Nationale Napolitana, I could hear opera practice in the San Carlo wing of the Spanish Palazzo Reale (large four-floored opera house built in 7 months in 1737). When I descended five floors from the B&B on the Via Carraciolo, overlooking the bay, I would sit outside the nextdoor bar where I qualified to order pizza napolitana by quoting "Chi va per chisti mare..." a Neapolitan proverb* which the chef in white hat completed. But his daughter was astonished that someone my age did not know all the processional songs and those for feste. (Yes, I could belt out "O Sole Mio," written on the Black Sea.) So I picked up this book hoping to fill in folk culture, though it mainly covers high culture, grandeur, admitting some barbaric street customs.

Barbier covers from 1708 to 1764, largely under Charles de Bourbon who was given Naples by his father Philipe V of Spain. Charles made Naples independent, no longer directly under Spain, and with her independence Naples flourished as the third city of the world, after London and Paris, in population and in arts, particularly music. The castrati throve, often tall —though playing sopranos, women— also famous and rich, the Michael Jacksons and Mick Jaggers of the day. (See my review of Barbier’s “World of the Castrati,” written two decades earlier.)

The Neapolitan aristocrats supported music and the arts, entertained foreigners from various rulers, whether Spain or the Austrian Emperor. This contrasts to the Venetian aristocrats, who were forbidden to entertain non-aristocrats.(52) Likewise, the Venetian music schools (vocal) were in a convent, the orphans behind screens on the second floor. In Naples, the four conservatoires were largely open, also supported openly by members of society including aristocrats.

Foreign tourists (deliciously, “voyageurs,” as if Canadian explorers) all judged Naples the grandest city they’d seen, though they usually contrasted the tangle and poverty of the street people, the “lazzaroni.” One, Rotrou, warned it was the most beautiful he would ever see, so travelers should wait till they’d seen all others, “devraient la voir la dernière pour éviter le dégoût des autres”(24).

In contrast to its beauty of site on the bay and amongst easy-growing olives, grapes and grain are its mob of unemployed, often homeless, fed by church charity, soup and bread. One De Merville said this city is “un Paradis habité par des diables”(35). Montesquieu does not judge, but analyzes that the land is similarly cultivated as the Papal lands just north, but that even the aristocrats under the various foreign rulers were treated as serfs of the crown. And the people were demoralized, saw no benefits from their labor, had no civilian rights (28).

But despite their plight, most Neapolitans are joyous, voluble, expansive and gesticulating. Their fêtes are the best, though not as long or sumptuous as those in richer towns like Venice and Rome. Abbot Coyer says the “Neapolitains vivant plus par des oreilles que par tout autres sens”(38).

Four Sundays a year, during Carnival, and on great occasions—new king, royal marriage, visit of another king— the street people dined in streets hung with cheeses and ham, but also on chickens killed in the street. Barbarically, not just chickens, also “vache,” beef, they “massacre les animaux vivants à coup des couteau”(44). Many ladies on palace balconies watched out of duty, but fainted from the horror.

De Sade records a pitiable event worthy a murder mystery. Two men with knives competed for the hind quarters of beef, but one fell covered with blood, some his own. “Mais le vainqueur ne jouit pas longtemps sa victoire.” The rung on which he’d stepped to cut slipped under his feet, and he fell under the bloody carcass—and onto that of his rival.

These “cocagnes,” with elaborate raised, painted staging, were performed to honor, say, a new royal wife, and to express the generosity of the king. In 1738, the new wife Marie-Amélie stopped the horror for several days; however, not the monarch nor his vice regent Tanucci, could eliminate this custom. They did manage to move it out of the sight of the King, to Piazza Municipia before Castel Nuovo. Then in 1778 they banned it.

The early carnival featured wagons decorated like Mars, or Diana and Endymion, piled with pyramids of food. Some of these wagos held conservatory singers and musicians, and some held masked singers in dialect.*

Charles de Bourbon was short, with a sad smile, and a big nose, but gracious, cordial, even humble except where ritual was performed--men approached him on their knees. (He also kept the outdated hand-kissing ritual, for an hour, men on their knees, then kissing his hand...same for women and his wife.) Upon arrival, unmarried, a Te Deum was sung at the Church of San Lorenzo; upon his marriage, a Te Deum at the Duomo (San Gennaro). Lorenzo was the patron saint of Spaniards, Gennaro of Neapolitans. All his life Charles spoke and understood Italian (but not Neapolitan, comme moi), often spoke in Spanish, but wrote to his parents in French. His father had, like him as a young man, taken rule over an entirely new country: Fillipe V, grandson of Louis XIV, took reign in Madrid at 17, while Charles reigned in Napoli at 18. The extrovert Neapolitans were the opposite of him, but they came to appreciate, even love him. (He writes his father about having sex twice a night--not sheerly a dynastic note.) ( )