Music conservatories of Naples

This guide to the Music conservatories of Naples follows orphan boys taught to sing and play starting in the 1580s, when the city armed abandoned children with a musical trade rather than warehousing them, and traces how four such houses merged into one royal college by 1807. It covers the royal decree requiring every opera staged in Naples to deposit its score in the conservatory's library, filling shelves with works spanning Alessandro Scarlatti through Rossini, Bellini and Verdi. A statue of Beethoven, who never attended the school, watches over the cloister's rows of palm trees. Step inside to see the glass cases lining the halls beyond it.