Луиджи Денца

Luigi Denza wrote hundreds of songs. Funiculì, Funiculà was made in 1880 for the Piedigrotta festival, to words by the journalist Peppino Turco, to mark the funicular railway newly opened on Vesuvius; both Richard Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov took it for a Neapolitan folk tune. Born at Castellammare di Stabia, Denza studied at the Naples Conservatory with Saverio Mercadante and Paolo Serrao and his opera Wallenstein reached the stage in Naples in 1876. His songs include Occhi di fata and Luna fedel. He settled in London in the 1880s and was appointed professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1898. He died there in 1922. He wrote in French and English as well as in Italian and Neapolitan, Se being another of the songs, and the London years began in 1887.