Dicitencello vuje

Rodolfo Falvo set Enzo Fusco's text Dicitencello vuje in 1930, late in a career spent almost entirely inside the Neapolitan song trade. The words are a confession made at one remove: the singer asks a friend to tell a woman that someone loves her, and only in the final lines admits it is himself. Falvo wrote the melody with a rising sequence that keeps deferring its resolution until that admission arrives. Tenors adopted it quickly, and it is now performed more often in opera houses than in the popular venues for which it was written.