Addio a Napoli

Teodoro Cottrau published Addio a Napoli in 1868, words and music his own, at a time when the Naples publishing house he had inherited from his French-born father was turning the city's songs into printed goods for a national market. The text is a farewell spoken by someone leaving the bay, a subject that would dominate Neapolitan song for the next half century as emigration to the Americas accelerated. Cottrau, who also sat in the Italian parliament, wrote it in Italian rather than in dialect, which helped it travel.