EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis): In this unforgettable scene from Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Sophia Loren joins the great Greek singer Tony Maroudas in “Ti ein’ afto pou to lene agapi” — “What Is This They Call Love?” Takis Morakis composed the music, with lyrics by Ioannis (Giannis) Fermanoglou.
And yet, watching Sophia sing and move to it, nothing feels foreign or rehearsed.
Born in Rome but raised in Pozzuoli, near Naples, she grew up in the very heart of ancient Greek Campania. Nearby Cumae — Kymi — was founded by Greeks from Euboea, while the earliest Greek settlement from which Naples grew was known as Parthenope, followed by Neapolis — the “New City.” Amazingly, that ancient Greek identity still lives on today: Napoli and its people are proudly called Partenopei, a name heard with particular passion wherever Napoli Soccer Club plays.
Perhaps that is why this performance feels so natural. Sophia did not speak Greek, nor was she a Greek singer or dancer, yet the language, rhythm, gestures, and Mediterranean passion seem almost instinctive. Raised on the shores of the same sea, in a region deeply shaped by Hellenic civilization, she carried something of that shared Greek–South Italian cultural and genetic DNA within her.
It is almost as though Greece was not something Sophia Loren had to learn for this scene. She only had to recognize it.
For a few mesmerizing minutes, she does not merely sing a Greek song — she seems completely at home in it.
