Rota, Nino

(1911-1979)

(Born Nini Rinaldi.) Composer. Coming from a long line of musicians, Rota was something of a child prodigy. His first work, the oratorio L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista (The Childhood of St. John the Baptist), was written when Rota was eight and performed publicly in Paris and Milan when he was only 12. In the same year he was admitted to the Milan Conservatorium, where he studied with Ildebrando Pizzetti before moving to the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome to study composition under Alfredo Casella. After graduating in 1930 he spent two years in the United States, studying under Rosario Scalero and Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia. He returned to Italy in 1933 and undertook a degree in literature at the University of Milan. Then, after teaching at the Liceo Musicale of Taranto for a year, he was invited to teach harmony and composition at the Conservatorium of Bari, where he remained for the rest of his life, serving as director of the institute from 1950 onward.

   Rota's musical oeuvre is considerable and includes 10 operas, three symphonies, two oratorios, six concertos, a number of ballets, chamber pieces, and a great deal of music for theater and radio. He is, however, best remembered for his numerous and melodic film scores. Beginning with Raffaello Matarazzo's Trenopopolare (People's Train, 1933), Rota composed the music for over 150 films, collaborating with major Italian directors such as Alberto Lattuada, Renato Castellani, Mario Monicelli, Franco Zeffirelli, and Luchino Visconti, for whom he scored Senso (1954), Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), and Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963). Above all, however, Rota is remembered for his prolific partnership with Federico Fellini, having provided the distinctive and often haunting soundtracks of all of Fellini's films from Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik, 1952) to Prove d'orchestra (Orchestra rehearsal, 1978). Rota also worked with a number of international directors such as King Vidor, Edward Dmytryk, Rene Clement, and Sergei Bondarchuk, but he achieved his greatest world renown from his extensive collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola on all three of the Godfather films, receiving the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score for The Godfather: Part II (1974). Having already won four Nastri d'argento for earlier films, he was also awarded a David di Donatello in 1977 for his score for Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (Fellini's Casanova, 1976). In 1995 a foundation was instituted in his name to honor his memory and encourage musical composition.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira