By Niccolò Graffio

The travesty that produced the modern country of Italy worked to suppress in no small way the native cultures of Southern Italy, but it could not destroy them. As the advocates of Risorgimento moved to center the political life of the nascent state around Rome (and the economic life in the north) they likewise tried to stifle the art, music and literature of Due Sicilie by denigrating them as 'inferior'.

Many Southern Italian culture producers of note, such as the great opera composer Vincenzo Bellini, were relegated to obscurity in favor of those born and bred in the north. In Bellini's case, his obscurity would last until he was 'rediscovered' in the middle part of the 20th century in large part thanks to the efforts of a non-Italian, the legendary soprano Dame Joan Sutherland.

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Source: Magna Grece