Eduardo commented on the plot saying that it was inspired from a real-life story, and specifically from some "Campoluongo", a furniture-maker who lived in Rione Sanità and was respected by the population as a local authority (i.e., a sort of "Mayor").
Il sindaco del Rione Sanità was acclaimed by both the audience and the critics,[2] while raising much controversy for its unusual ethical perspective.
Some critics have thus interpreted Barracano as essentially a Camorra boss[3] or a "Godfather", and have expressed perplexity over the ambiguous representation of this character as "good".
[5] For what concerns the identification of Barracano's alternative moral system with the Camorra honor code, Eduardo denied that Campoluongo/Barracano was a Camorrist; he was rather a Mammasantissima, i.e., someone who lived outside legality (a guappo) but that the people would call for to be protected from unjustice.
Since then, it has been played on stage by a number of theatrical companies, including that of Carlo Giuffré, longtime partner of Eduardo.