It has been part of the repertoire of greatest tenors of the twentieth century, among the greatest world hits of the Neapolitan song. Torna a Surriento (Come back to Sorrento) is an eternal classic, which over the decades has been able to conquer even young idols such as Elvis Presley and Bono of U2, overcoming the generational barriers.

Thanks to the melody and the lyrics, but also to a definitely particular story for a song. Composed in 1894 by Ernesto De Curtis on the words of his brother Giambattista, Eugenio got inspired by the song of a nightingale bird he heard while staying at the Hotel Tramontano in Sorrento. Several years passed before it was carried out, in 1902, for a special occasion: the visit of the Prime Minister Zanardelli to the city, who went to the same hotel, owned by the major. He was the one who made known the fact that he had solicited the composition of a song in order to dedicate it to the illustrious guest, with the intention of reminding him of the promise to provide Sorrento with the sewerage system and the post office. Therefore, De Curtis family adapted that piece they had kept in the drawer for eight years. Since then, it started its lucky path of world hit. Translated into the main foreign languages, including Surrender from Elvis.

Among the great tenors who have made Torna a Surriento famous, there is also Enrico Caruso, who in 1902 recorded his first discs with historical opera pieces. Caruso was a guest of Sorrento in the last months of his short but very intense life. Already very sick, just operated on a lung, he moved to Sorrento at the beginning of 1921, guest of the Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, where the doctor saint Giuseppe Moscati visited him. Caruso stayed there for several months, returning to Naples only shortly before dying, on the 2nd of August 1921.

In the hotel room occupied by the famous tenor, which still kept the piano he played, 65 years after Lucio Dalla stayed there and had to stop in Sorrento because of a damage to the boat with which he was headed to Capri. In that circumstance, the Bolognese singer-songwriter became aware of Caruso stay and of how during the months of illness he had fallen in love with a young girl to whom he was giving singing lessons. That story, as well as the evocative force of the room and the sea it was possible to admire, had inspired Dalla another masterpiece of world music, Caruso, published in 1986 in the album DallAmeriCaruso. And, among the several versions, the most famous is the 1992 one of the duet between Dalla and a of worthy successor of Caruso: Luciano Pavarotti.