ニーノ・ロータ
作曲
In 1933, Nino Rota wrote the first of his 138 film scores. Almost twenty years later, he began his collaboration with Federico Fellini with Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik), which brought him international fame. The Italian composer provided the scores for 15 other Fellini films, including La dolce vita, 8 ½, Amarcord and La Strada. Rota also worked with directors such as Luchino Visconti (White Nights, The Leopard) and Francis Ford Coppola. He won an Oscar in 1975 for the film music for the second part of Coppola’s mafia trilogy The Godfather.
Nino Rota, who rubbed shoulders with figures such as Arturo Toscanini and Gabriele d’Annunzio in his family circle, was a musical prodigy. He received professional piano lessons from his mother at an early age and began composing at the age of eight. At twelve, he conducted his oratorio L’infanzia di Giovanni Battista (The Childhood of John the Baptist). A year earlier, Rota had begun studying composition at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. He later transferred to the Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied under Alfredo Casella and graduated in 1929. Rota gained formative experiences in the United States, where he studied for two years at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia under Rosario Scalero (composition) and Fritz Reiner (conducting) from 1930 onwards. After returning to Italy, Rota enrolled in the faculty of philosophy at the University of Milan, where he obtained his doctorate in 1937 with a thesis on the music of the Italian Renaissance. Later, he himself taught composition at the Conservatorio di Musica Niccolò Piccinni in Bari, which he headed from 1950 to 1977. In addition to his intensive work for film, television and radio, Rota wrote operas, oratorios and sacred works, as well as orchestral, chamber, piano and solo music. He never saw any fundamental difference between composing for the concert hall and composing for film.
