His love for Neapolitan song led him to collaborate with composer Vincenzo Valente, at the time a lodger at the de Curtis family palace in corso Garibaldi.
De Curtis felt a great love for Sorrento, where from 1891 until 1910 he passed six months of every year at the Grand Hotel of Guglielmo Tramontano, who was mayor at the time.
Indeed, de Curtis was by all accounts a curious and amiable man, and was rarely without a compliment for an attractive woman; he courted many, and would often dedicate his lyrics to them.
Tramontano and de Curtis were great friends, and the mayor hired him to decorate some of the rooms of the hotel with his frescos; he also painted some canvases there, and wrote poetry and songs.
More recent research indicates that the song may merely have been reworked for the occasion; family papers indicate that the brothers deposited a copy with the Italian Society of Authors and Editors in 1894, eight years before they claimed to have written it.