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The true name of E. A. Mario was Giovanni Ermete Gaeta, that he used to sign his early songs.
At the beginning he wrote above all in Italian; then, as he felt embittered by some judgements, he started a series of poems in dialect; he signed them with the pseudonym E.A. Mario.
This pseudonym corrisponds to his name, the initials of Alessandro Sacheri (his friend and journalist from Genua), of the Slavic poetess Maria Clarvy (who collaborated as E. A. Mario to the Genoa newspaper "Il lavoro") and of Mario Rispardi, who was a burning Mazzini supporter, as E. A. Mario himself was.
So it's explained the pseudonym that for a long time let people get confused: they thought the pseudonym belonged to many artists.
E. A. Mario played the mandolin very well and he worked at the post-office. At work, while he was at the counter, he met the master Segrè.
It has been told during that meeting the poet told Segrè he did not use proper lyrics for his beautiful songs. Out of patience, Segrè challenged E.A. Mario, asking him for a lyric.
In this way E. A. Mario composed the song "Cara mammà", which later was published by Ricordi.
Since then, the volcanic poet and musician started a long and extraordinary artistic career.
Because of too many absences, he had to leave the post-office but he was reinstated; then he was known by everyone. He was already famous in Naples when in 1918 the song "La leggenda del Piave" established his name; this song, that many considered written by an anonymous author, got the hymn of a nation in war against oppressor.
Many of his songs were successful but his economic conditions did not get better because the profits from the copyright was not much; the situation got worse when his beloved wife Adelina got ill; she was the daughter of the actress Leonilde Gaglianone and E.A. Mario married her in 1919 after only three months of engagement.
After his wife death, only his daughter looked after him even in straitened circumstances; E.A. Mario died in his rented house in Viale Elena in 1961 .