Sceneggiata

Beginning as a form of musical theatre after World War I, it was also adapted for cinema; sceneggiata films became especially popular in the 1970s, and contributed to the genre becoming more widely known outside Naples.

Plots revolve around melodramatic themes drawing from the Neapolitan culture and tradition, including passion, jealousy, betrayal, personal deceit and treachery, honor, vengeance, and life in the world of petty crime.

[5] This is also true of the genre's most commonly identified forerunners, such as the works of Pasquale Altavilla (1806–1875), who developed many of his comedies around successful songs to appeal to a larger audience.

The typical sceneggiata included monologues, dialogues, songs, dancing, and its plot was centered on strong emotions such as love, passion, jealousy, honor, betrayal, adultery, vengeance, and the fight between good and evil.

New York City's Little Italy, most nostably, became a sort of second homeland of the sceneggiata, with notable companies such as Maggio-Coruzzolo-Ciaramella, Marchetello-Diaz, and that led by Gilda Mignonette (1890–1953), the so-called "Queen of Emigrants".

Prominent representatives of this generation of sceneggiata authors include Alberto Sciotti (1925–1998), Aniello Langella (1919–1995), Francesco Martinelli, Elena Cannio, and Gaetano Di Maio (1927–1991).

The canons within which the themes brought to the stage by the authors of the Neapolitan sceneggiate are well defined, such as love, betrayal, honor - sometimes the underworld -, summarized in the trinomial of protagonists:[11]