At age 14 & feeling highly romantic, I couldn’t have been more captivated by the Zeffirelli film of Romeo & Juliet; most assuredly the sight of a nearly naked Leonard Whiting held my imagination for years. I was totally in love with the score. At the time, I was studying improvisational piano with an amazing teacher who coached me through working on the theme from the film, which I loved.
The Shakespeare film was my first encounter with the music of Nino Rota & the start of my love for all things Italian. I had yet to see a Fellini film, that wouldn’t happen for another 4 years when I saw Satyricon one evening in Boston… while on acid!
Nino Rota is one of the most important composers in the history of film. Popular & prolific, he wrote some of the memorable & loved film scores: The Godfather Parts I & II, The Leopard, Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare films, nearly all of Fellini & for more than 140 popular Italian movies. Yet his music does not quite work in the way that we have come to assume music in film works: it does not seek to draw us in & identify, or to overwhelm & excite. The music is lovely yet reticent, at once comic & touching rhythms, & with a direct relation to what's on screen, Rota's music is close & affectionate towards characters & storylines but still restrained, not detached but ironically attached.
Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of musicians, Nino Rota moved to Rome while still a child. He completed his studies at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in 1929. Rota was an 'enfant prodige', famous both as a composer & as an orchestra conductor. His first oratorio- L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was performed in Milan & Paris as early as 1923 & his lyrical comedy, "Il Principe Porcaro," was composed in 1926. From 1930 to 1932, Nino Rota lived in the USA. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia where he attended classes in composition & orchestra taught by Fritz Reiner. He returned to Italy & earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan. In 1937, he began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Bari Conservatory, a title he held from 1950 until his death in 1979. After his childhood compositions, Rota wrote operas & ballets. he composed countless works for orchestra that have been performed since before World War II & are still performed by orchestras all over the world. His film scores date back to the early 1940s. He is most noted for his work with Federico Fellini. He wrote all of the movie scores for Fellini's films. Rota did the scores for films by directors: Renato Castellani, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola (he won an Oscar for best original score for The Godfather: Part II (1974)), King Vidor, & René Clement. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, & Zeffirelli. In 1995, the Nino Rota Foundation was established at Fondazione Cini of Venice, Italy, specializing in the works of 20th century Italian compsers.
Fellini on Nino Rota: "He was someone who had a rare quality belonging to the world of intuition. Just like children, simple men, sensitive people, innocent people, he would suddenly say dazzling things. As soon as he arrived, stress disappeared, everything turned into a festive atmosphere; the movie entered a joyful, serene, fantastic period, a new life."
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