Santa Lucia

The story

"Santa Lucia" is a traditional Neapolitan song. Teodoro Cottrau (1827–1879) translated it from Neapolitan into Italian, and the Cottrau firm published it in Naples in 1849 as a barcarola, a boat song, during the first stage of Italian unification. It was the first Neapolitan song to be given Italian words. Cottrau, often wrongly named as its composer, was the son of the French-born Italian composer and song collector Guillaume Louis Cottrau (1797–1847); various sources credit the music to A. Longo, in 1835.

The words celebrate Borgo Santa Lucia, a picturesque waterfront district on the Gulf of Naples, in the voice of a boatman inviting passers-by to take a ride in his boat and enjoy the cool of the evening.

In the United States an early edition was published in Baltimore by M. McCaffrey, with an English translation by Thomas Oliphant. In the 20th century the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso made what is perhaps its definitive recording, and Mario Lanza, Sergio Franchi and Elvis Presley, who sang it in his film Viva Las Vegas, were among those who recorded it after him. In Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Norway the tune was given new words for Saint Lucy's Day, in the darkest time of the year, and is sung in several Swedish, Norwegian and Danish versions and a Sámi one. It was also sung with Czech words as "Krásná je Neapol", made famous by Waldemar Matuška, with German words by Austrian student fraternities, and as the tune of the anthem of Silpakorn University in Thailand, whose Italian founder, Silpa Bhirasri, was honoured with a Thai translation of the song in 2017.

What it says

A boatman's invitation: he praises the evening at Santa Lucia and calls on his listeners to come out in his boat and enjoy the cool air on the water. The mood is gentle and lilting, the rocking of a barcarole.

The words

The words of this song are in the public domain, but no free, reliable edition has been found yet to import them from, and the Institute never types a song’s words from memory: Genius shows them below, under its own licence.