TRIBUTE TO TOTO’
NAPLES’S BEST ACTOR
Totò, stage name of Antonio de Curtis was born on 15th February, 1898 in district Sanità n. 109 in via Santa Maria Antesaecula, Naples. He died in Rome on 15 April 1967 . He was an Italian actor, playwright, lyricist, poet, scriptwriter and musician, almost unique in the cultural scenario of the 20th century. “Napoli mia, io penso sempre a te!“ (“Oh, my Naples, I always think of you”) , this was his recurring phrhase, in which he expressed all the anguish and pain for the distance from his city
Elena Anticoli de Curtis pays tribute to her grandfather with a new book: a collection of Poems and Lyrics of Toto’
Stefania introduces Elena Anticoli de Curtis at Colonnese,
a famous publishing house, cultural gathering place and antiquarian bookshop in Naples
Antonio De Curtis. Il Principe Poeta
Tutte le Poesie e le Liriche di Totò
di De Curtis Elena; Falconetti Virginia
He was a prince, but his real great nobility was in the heart that beat in that marionette body: which had made him so famous as "Totò", but which had also suffocated the man-Antonio De Curtis for his whole life.
In his poems there are no jokes and movements that made him famous, but there is the world seen from behind that mask. There is the difficult life of the beginnings (and not only), success, loves, disappointments, nostalgia. There is Naples, with its "mother tongue", which is not, however, the abused "land of the sun", but in a certain sense it is the world.
Because that of Antonio De Curtis is above all a "moral poetry" - not moralistic - that is born and speaks to the hearts of men. Who believes in good and cannot stand arrogance. Who believes in beauty, and does not renounce to love, although among the inevitable bitterness that life reserves for everyone.
Finally a complete collection - with five unpublished works - relaunches and rediscovers the poems and lyrics of Totò, taken from the "original papers" by his granddaughter Elena, together with Virginia Falconetti.
HIS LATEST WORDS:
“I DON’T FEEL WELL. . . TAKE ME TO NAPLES”
Totò's death in 1967 was front page news