Nino Rota

He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979 – an average of three scores each year over a 46-year period, and in his most productive period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s he wrote as many as ten scores every year, and sometimes more, with a remarkable thirteen film scores to his credit in 1954. Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo De Filippo as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

Nino Rota studied at Curtis Institute of Music, IES Manuel Murguía and Milan Conservatory. Training under Ildebrando Pizzetti, Fritz Reiner and Rosario Scalero is recorded. The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is performing arts and film score. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera, symphony, 20th-century classical and classical. Residence is recorded at Milan and Kingdom of Italy. Distinctions recorded are Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score, Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and BAFTA Award for Best Original Music.

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi was born on 3 December 1911 into a musical family in Milan, Italy. Rota was a renowned child prodigy – his first oratorio, L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written at age 11 and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy after Hans Christian Andersen, Il Principe Porcaro, was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926. He studied at the Milan Conservatory there under Giacomo Orefice and then undertook serious study of composition under Ildebrando Pizzetti and Alfredo Casella at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, graduating in 1930. Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States, where he lived from 1930 to 1932. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, where he was taught conducting by Fritz Reiner and had Rosario Scalero as an instructor in composition. Returning to Milan, he wrote a thesis on the Renaissance composer Gioseffo Zarlino. Rota earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan, graduating in 1937, and began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Liceo Musicale in Bari, a title he held from 1950 until 1978.

Rota wrote numerous concerti and other orchestral works as well as piano, chamber and choral music, much of which has been recorded and released on CD. After his death from heart failure in 1979, Rota's music was the subject of Hal Willner's 1981 tribute album Amarcord Nino Rota, which featured several jazz musicians who were relatively unknown at the time who went on to become famous. Gus Van Sant used some of Rota's music in his 2007 film Paranoid Park and director Michael Winterbottom used several Rota selections in the 2005 film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. Danny Elfman frequently cites Nino Rota as a major influence (particularly on his scores for the Pee-Wee films). Director Mario Monicelli filmed a documentary Un amico magico: il maestro Nino Rota which featured interviews with Franco Zeffirelli and Riccardo Muti (a student under Rota at Bari Conservatory), and was followed by a German documentary Nino Rota - Un maestro della musica. Both explored film and concert sides of the composer.

Rota's 1955 opera Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) is an adaptation of the play by Eugène Labiche and was presented by the Santa Fe Opera in 1977. In 2005 his opera Aladino e la lampada magica (Aladdin and the Magical Lamp), with Cosmin Ifrim in the title role, was performed in German translation at the Vienna State Opera and released on DVD. Il cappello di paglia di Firenze and Aladino e la lampada magica are regularly staged in Europe as are many symphonic and chamber titles Written for a radio production by RAI in 1950, Rota's short opera, I due timidi (The Two Timid Ones), was presented by the Santa Fe Opera as part of their pre-season "One-Hour Opera" program in May/June 2008, as well as London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of a 'Triple Bill' in 2022.

Rota had one daughter from a relationship with pianist Magdalena Longari. Rota died in Rome on 10 April 1979, aged 67, from a coronary thrombosis.