Mario Merola
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Mario Merola (6 April 1934 - 12 November 2006) was a Neapolitan singer and actor, most prominently known for having rejunevated the traditional popular Neapolitan melodrama known as the sceneggiata.
Born into a poor family of Naples, Merola held a number of day jobs ranging from kitchen help to longshoreman at the port of Naples until one of his songs, Malu Filgliu, was used successfully in a sceneggiata, promoting him into the limelight. Merola was at the height of his popularity in the 1970s and 1980s.
He recorded approximately 40 CDs of sceneggiata music and has extensive credits in filmed versions of this Neapolitan form, newer ones as well as "classical" works from earlier in the 20th century. He toured abroad with a Neapolitan company to bring the sceneggiata to emigrant Italian communities elsewhere.
Although better known as a singer, Merola starred in several Italian crime thrillers, usually playing a gangster. He starred as crime boss Michele Barresi in Umberto Lenzi's 1979 thriller From Corleone to Brooklyn.
He died aged 72 in 2006, after a being in intensive care in San Leonardo hospital in Castellammare di Stabia (Naples), for breathing difficulties.
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