Nino Rota

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi, known as Nino Rota, was one of the most celebrated film composers of all time with 178 screen credits including scores of Italian films, many directed by Federico Fellini, and the Hollywood pictures 'The Godfather' and 'The Godfather Part II'. Acclaimed for his infectious melodies, his music for the gangster films directed by Francis Ford Coppola won all the top film prizes and earned him a Grammy Award. His score for Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita' was also nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Instrumental Theme and Best Soundtrack in 1961. His song 'A Time for Us (Love Theme from 'Romeo and Juliet')' arranged by Henry Mancini went to number one on Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart in 1969 and a version sung by Johnny Mathis with lyrics by Larry Kusik and Eddie Snyder went to number eight the same year.

Born in Milan to a musical family, Rota's talents were revealed when he was very young and started writing music in his early teens. Following study in Italy, he went to the United States to attend the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia and went home to complete his education at the University of Milan. With a degree in literature, he turned to teaching until 1942 when Raffaelo Matarazzo hired him to write the music for his film 'Giorno di Nozze'. Movie assignments flourished and in 1952 Fellini selected him to score his film 'The White Sheik'. Rota became the director's musical collaborator on 'I Vitelloni' (1953), 'La Strada' (1954), 'Il Bidone' (1955), 'The Nights of Calabria' (1957), 'La Dolce Vita' (1960), '8½' (1963), 'Juliet of the Spirits' (1965), 'Fellini's Satyricon' (1969), 'Roma' (1972), 'Fellini's Casanova' (1076) and 'Amarcord' (1973).

Other films he scored include Luchino Visconti's 'Le Notti Blanche' (1957), 'Rocco and his Brothers' (1960) and 'The Leopard' (1963), Franco Zeffirelli's 'The Taming of the Shrew' (1967) and 'Romeo and Juliet' (1968) and Sergei Bondarchuk's 'Waterloo' (1970). He also wrote operas and ballets and he was a dedicated teacher as director of the Bari Conservatory from 1950 until his death from cardiac arrest in 1979.