Salvatore Cardillo

One song of Salvatore Cardillo's has outlived the rest of his output entirely: Core 'ngrato, written in 1911 to a Neapolitan text by Alessandro Sisca, who published as Riccardo Cordiferro. Cardillo was born in Naples and studied piano and composition there before emigrating in 1903 to New York, where an Italian-speaking population large enough to sustain theatres, newspapers, publishers and musical societies gave him his living. The song addresses an ungrateful beloved and moves in a single arc from intimate lament to operatic climax. Caruso was its first great exponent; Gigli, Di Stefano, Corelli and Pavarotti followed him. Among the canonical Neapolitan songs it is the odd one out — written in America, and inseparable from the distance that produced it. Cardillo lived from 1874 to 1947 and also wrote for film; in 1921 New York saw Barcarola and Oi luna issued together as Two Neapolitan Songs. He died in the city that had given him his living.