In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures began to inhabit secular but also sacred operas. These stock characters included the Neapolitan, the Calabrian and the Boy, and all three plus a fourth, ‘The Spaniard’, appear in a comic intermezzo inserted in the 1673 opera Il disperato innocente by the little-known Francesco Antonio Boerio. This is the oldest surviving Neapolitan comic intermezzo, and, along with its Prologue, seems to have been written by other authors. This video preserves a historically informed performance given by Antonio Florio with Pino De Vittorio that explores the tradition of the intermezzo in 17th-century plots.

“The musicians of the Cappella Neapolitana led by Florio use baroque instruments, of which they are true specialists. The opera, which from a vocal and instrumental point of view is more elaborate than one might presume, has re-proposed in a historically informed (but no less lively) way the sounds, voices, colours, jokes, in short, the atmosphere of excessive joy that one must have experienced in the seventeenth-century theatres in Naples. All the actor-singers, who wore the magnificent costumes by Annalisa Giacci, were excellent.” – Musica

Cast:
- Napoletano: Pino De Vittorio (tenor)
- Calabrese: Giuseppe Naviglio (bass)
- Ragazzo: Olga Cafiero (soprano)
- Spagnolo: Rosario Totaro (tenor)