An extravagantly kitsch wedding ceremony among the widow of a mafia gangster and a famous crooner has prompted a row in Naples, with critics pronouncing it has besmirched the photo of the metropolis. In scenes harking back to an episode of The Sopranos, 4 white horses drew a pumpkin-shaped white carriage through Naples’ streets. Musicians in cream suits played trumpets to rejoice the nuptials of Tony Colombo, a famous nearby singer, and Tina Rispoli, whose first husband turned into gunned down in a hail of bullets a bloody mafia feud in 2012.
Acrobats and jugglers preceded the fairy-story wedding ceremony carriage.
Local politicians are incensed, saying the spectacle tarnished Naples’ popularity and said the event did no longer have the necessary lets into a parade through the city’s center. The wedding came when Naples is cleaning itself up and looking to pass faraway from institutions with the powerful Camorra mafia. “We won’t allow Naples to be a stage for glitzy weddings of doubtful taste and without respecting rules inside the least,” stated Alessandra Clemente, a neighborhood politician whose mother changed into by chance killed through a stray bullet at some stage in a mafia shootout in 1997.
The wedding ceremony was preceded earlier inside the week by way of a lavish celebration in Piazza del Plebiscito, a rectangular within the historical heart of the town. Permission becomes now not granted for that either, stated Ms. Clemente, a city councilor. “They laid on a concert with speakers, a stage, lighting, song, and a band. Ms. Rispoli, 43, become widowed after her husband, Gaetano Marino, was shot down on a seaside within Terracina, north of Naples. Investigators determined eleven bullets in his frame. Her new husband insisted that he had acquired permission for the gaudy nuptials from the mayor of Naples.
He understood that this became a beautiful expression of affection,” Colombo, 32, told an Italian TV channel.
He is a Neapolitan new melodic tune singer, a mélange of cheesy pop and conventional ballads that celebrates running-magnificence existence and is regularly sung in dialect. Four years ago, there has been a similar row in Rome, while a lavish funeral turned into organized for an alleged organized crime boss whose nickname was “Il Re di Roma” – the King of Rome.
6 black horses wearing plumes pulled a bar of gold and black carriage sporting the frame of Vittorio Casamonica, the alleged head of the Casamonica clan, accused of drug-running, racketeering, extortion, and usury. Overhead, a helicopter dropped rose petals from the sky as mourners amassed outside a church. A brass band performed the topic music from The Godfather. Questions had been asked as to who gave permission for the funeral and why the nearby Catholic priest had agreed to participate in it. Rosy Bindi, an MP and the president of the parliamentary anti-mafia fee, stated at the time it was “alarming” that a funeral will be “transformed into an ostentatious show of mafia energy.”