Nino Rota – Musical Chameleon by Alexandra Wilson
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musical soirées at the family home, which were pera has, from the earliest days of attended by such musical luminaries as Puccini, cinema, made its influence felt upon Toscanini, Leoncavallo and even Stravinsky and music composed for film. Film scores, Ravel. The young Rota started playing the piano from the early talkies through the Hollywood at the age of four and composing at the age of Golden Age and up to the blockbusters of the eight; his first oratorio was premiered when he was present, have often emulated a lush, Romantic twelve. After studying in Milan with Ildebrando sound that owes much to nineteenth-century Pizzetti, a key figure in early Italian modernism, opera. Operatic settings also regularly form he moved to Rome in 1926 to study with Alfredo the backdrop for seminal film scenes – think, Casella. America beckoned and Rota transferred for instance, of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere to the Curtis Institute in at the opera in Pretty Philadelphia in 1931–1932, Woman or the prisoners where he became friends listening to Così fan with Aaron Copland and tutte over a loudspeaker Samuel Barber. in The Shawshank Redemption – while The pieces that Rota film scores are often composed upon his return peppered with operatic to Italy were predominantly excerpts. But for one of serious concert works, but the most famous of all the eclectic influences he film composers, Nino had assimilated during his Rota, the relationship time in the United States between opera and soon began to make their film music was an mark upon his aesthetic. unusually symbiotic These influences ranged one: opera influenced from popular song and jazz his film scores, but film Nino Rota conducting the Philharmonic Orchestra to the orchestral works of music also influenced at the Royal Albert Hall on October 13th 1973. Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, Nino Rota Archive, Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice.* his operas. then composers whose music was little known in Italy. Rota continued Rota is, of course, best remembered for his film music to write instrumental and orchestral music after and in particular for his collaborations with Federico the Second World War, although a growing gulf Fellini (including La dolce vita and Amarcord) and between his style and that of his Italian avantFrancis Ford Coppola (the first two Godfather films), garde contemporaries such as Luigi Dallapiccola yet opera composition was also an important part and Goffredo Petrassi led to accusations of of his career. He wrote ten operas in all, between the anachronism. From 1942, however, Rota’s career 1940s and the 1970s, and his youthful output in the took an interesting new turn, when he signed a 1930s was dominated by chamber and orchestral contract with the Lux Film Company, ushering works. Indeed, there was a widespread perception in in what was to become a stellar career as a film Italy that Rota had ‘sold out’ when film music began music composer. Rota reached the pinnacle of his to dominate his career after the Second World War. productivity between the late 1940s and mid 1950s, But those who devalued Rota for his concentration when he wrote scores for most of the big-box-office upon ‘popular’ music were blind to the fact that the Italian star vehicles of the era. cross-fertilisation between musical genres was a deliberate strategy on Rota’s part. It is from this busy period that Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze dates. Indeed, Rota’s hectic schedule Nino Rota was born in Milan in 1911 to a well-toduring this time of his life led to a prolonged hiatus do and highly musical family. His parents held
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Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze