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OPÉRATION SULTAN
Roberta Roman, guitare - Michèle Pierre, violoncelle - Marisa Mercadé, bandonéon -
Vincent Beer-Demander, mandoline - Petra Magoni, voix - Lucariello, voix -
Alberto Vingiano, bass - Claude Salmieri, percussions
After the first album "T4NO-Tango Napoletano", "La Petite Naples" represents the second part of my
work around the influence of Neapolitan culture and music in the world.
It aims to highlight the relations between two cities of the Mediterranean basin: Naples and Marseille.
Marseille, a stopover city on the long road of exile to the United States and Argentina, becomes for many Neapolitans a home port, then a home and finally a new homeland...
This project is not only part of an artistic and musical approach. It is also social and ideological.
Roberta Roman
LA PETITE NAPLES
Opération Sultan
LA PETITE NAPLES
Operation Sultan (1943-2023)
The Neapolitan cherishes the sea, precisely because it provides the possibility of living freely, in a space free from any border, from any dividing obstacle.
For this reason, the Neapolitan did not hesitate to take up arms, to defend the principles of human rights, during the two world wars of the twentieth century. In this context, the Neapolitan did not hesitate to leave his beloved hometown, to try to realize in the most accomplished way the ideal of freedom, which he had always dreamed of. After 1860 and the unification of Italy under the same and unique kingdom, the peoples of southern Italy emigrated massively, including the so-called "Neapolitan", which in truth included the inhabitants of all Campania; without forgetting those originating from the north of Naples, in particular from the small port of Sperlonga and around the Gulf of Gaeta, and from the east of Naples, on the Adriatic coast, in Puglia. The Neapolitans then favored two highly symbolic destinations: New York, whose famous Statue of Liberty is an essential emblem, and Marseille, the city that gave the French national anthem the name "La Marseillaise", thanks to the Marseille federates who were the first to sing it, to show their determination to defend the first principle of the republican trinity. The Neapolitan emigrants also made Argentina a favorite destination, since, faced with all the problems related to overpopulation, they dreamed of large natural spaces, where everything had to be built. Today, the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these Neapolitan emigrants, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, are completely integrated, as sociologists would write, into the societies of New York, Marseille and Argentina, even including world-famous personalities from different professional backgrounds. Even if the majority of them are artists. Unfortunately, the ancestors of these American-Neapolitans, Franco-Neapolitans and Argentino-Neapolitans paid a heavy price to achieve this successful integration.
At first, upon their arrival on American, French and Argentine soil, they suffered discrimination from the natives and were reduced to the most degrading, humiliating rank; forced to perform the most thankless and least remunerative work. Despite everything, the Neapolitans never gave up and persevered in the paths they had chosen, with the legitimate and noble ambition of ensuring a better future for their children, far from their homeland, as they said, which they left of their own free will. But without
ever denying it. On the contrary, they have never stopped promoting it, by perpetuating, in their new host lands, its know-how and traditions, whether cultural and especially musical, religious or culinary.
This is why the Neapolitans have left an indelible mark in all the foreign cities where they have settled. When selecting the music and songs for her CD, Roberta Roman aimed to offer the history of Neapolitan immigration, between shadow and light, with a musical journey between Naples and Marseille, via the United States and Argentina.
Ultimately, in the artistic creation that she has created with her
friends, Roberta Roman invites us to sail on the waves of the Mediterranean, mainly, but also on those of the Atlantic, in the footsteps of the Neapolitan emigrants.
And to create a unifying unity, she has chosen to transport us from one shore to the other, to the rhythm of the tango, which she masters wonderfully. By making Little Naples its home port. For the greatest pleasure of free women and men who cherish the sea, generator of cosmopolitanism!
Under the leadership of Philippe Pétain and Pierre Leval, French Head of State and Head of the Vichy government, anxious to realize their "national revolution", the French collaborators took advantage of the German occupation of Marseille (from November 1942) to destroy the Saint-Jean district known as "Little Naples", in the last phase of Operation Sultan, from February 1 to 19, 1943, with the systematic dynamiting of 1,500 buildings, over 14 hectares. On Sunday, January 24, 1943, 20,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom were Neapolitans, were expelled manu militari during the Old Port roundup, organized in concert by the Nazis and their cronies.
Their goal was to eradicate the cosmopolitanism of Saint-Jean and to rebuild a sanitized district, according to an ideological
identity model.
This is the largest repressive operation of all time in France. It employed between 10 and 12,000 French police officers and gendarmes, supervised by at least 4,000 heavily armed SS.
An exaction that was recognized as a crime against humanity by the French Public Prosecutor's Office on May 17, 2019.
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