'O marenariello

'O marenariello was published in 1893, with music by Salvatore Gambardella and words by Gennaro Ottaviano, and belongs to the great decade of the Neapolitan song trade, when new pieces were launched each September at the Piedigrotta festival. Gambardella could neither read nor write music and dictated his melodies to copyists. The song is cast as the address of a young fisherman to the woman he wants to take out in his boat, and its refrain passed into the standard tenor repertoire, recorded from the era of acoustic discs onwards.