Mario Pasquale Costa, stage name of Pasquale Antonio Cataldo Maria Costa (Taranto, 24 July 1858 - Monte Carlo, 27 September 1933), was an Italian composer, tenor and pianist, author of songs and operettas.
His first musical composition dates back to 1871, and was a barcarola called "In alto mare" on verses by the Neapolitan librettist Enrico Golisciani dedicated to Maria Brunner-Fontain.
From then on for sixty years he wrote numerous romances, popular songs, melodies, starlets, duets, hymns, marches, pantomimes, comic works, operettas, dances, fairy tales. He wrote verses and music of 'A frangesa on the table of the brewery "Strasbourg" in Naples in honor of the diva of the variety Amanda Henry and the song was brought to success by the Taranto singer Anna Fougez. The editor of Corriere del Mattino, Martino Cafiero, read a poem by his young editor Salvatore Di Giacomo, decided that with the appropriate music it would become a hit song: he first asked the Apulian musician Luigi Caracciolo, who refused the assignment, and he then turned to Mario Costa: Nannì's music was written directly on the marble of a table of the old coffee "Napoli" in the Villa Nazionale.
