Mario Merola

Mario Merola (6 April 1934 - 12 November 2006) was an Italian singer and actor, most prominently known for having rejuvenated the traditional popular Neapolitan melodrama known as the sceneggiata. Born into a poor family of Naples, Merola held a number of day jobs ranging from kitchen help to longshoreman at the port of Naples until one of his songs, Malu Figliu, was used successfully in a sceneggiata, promoting him into the limelight. Merola was at the height of his popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. He recorded approximately 40 CDs of sceneggiata music and has extensive credits in filmed versions of this Neapolitan form, newer ones as well as "classical" works from earlier in the 20th century. He toured abroad with a Neapolitan company to bring the sceneggiata to emigrant Italian communities elsewhere. Although better known as a singer, Merola starred in several Italian crime thrillers, usually playing a gangster. He starred as crime boss Michele Barresi in Umberto Lenzi's 1979 thriller From Corleone to Brooklyn. One of Merola's most renowned movies was Zappatore, where he plays a father who worked tirelessly to make his son into a lawyer, only to have his son turn his back on him. On November 26, 2005 Mario Merola was appointed, Knight of Malta, together with Bruno Venturini and Mario Trevi.[1] He died aged 72 in 2006, after having been in intensive care in San Leonardo hospital in Castellammare di Stabia (Naples), with breathing difficulties.