Roberto De Simone
By Stefano • May 19th, 2008 • Category: NaplesTheatreFestival 
Neapolitan musicologist Roberto De Simone is a most remarkable person. He was the artistic director of the San Carlo Theater in the late 1980s and was appointed director of the Naples Conservatory in 1995. He has spent his professional life rejuvenating the cultural history of his city. This includes collecting folk tales and music, and reviving a number of seldom- or never-performed pieces from the vast repertoire of 18th-century Neapolitan comic opera— works by Pergolesi and Jomelli, among others.
He has written, among much other work, a requiem in memory of the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, a cantata for the 17th-century Neapolitan revolutionary, Masaniello, and, in 1999, a remarkable oratorio, “Eleonora,” in honor of the republican heroine of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799. He is currently reworking his stage version of The Cat Cinderella, based on the oldest version of that fairy-tale, a dialect tale by Giambattista Basile from the early 1600s. As with many of his other works, he will take the show on the road in a version that employs a modified Neapolitan dialect in order to make the work accessible to a wider audience.
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