Giovanni "Nino" Rota Rinaldi (pronounced /ˈroʊtə/; Italian: [dʒoˈvanni ˈniːno ˈrɔːta riˈnaldi]; December 3, 1911 – April 10, 1979) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. He is best known for the music he wrote for films, especially those directed by Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also created the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare movies and for the first two films in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather series. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).

Over his long career, Rota was very productive, especially in writing music for movies. He composed more than 150 scores for Italian and international films from the 1930s until his death in 1979. This means he wrote about three scores each year for 46 years. During the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, he wrote as many as ten scores each year, and in 1954, he created 13 film scores. In addition to his film work, he wrote ten operas, five ballets, and many other pieces, including a famous string concerto. He also composed music for plays by Visconti, Zeffirelli, and Eduardo De Filippo. For nearly 30 years, he taught music at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, and served as its director.

Early career

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi was born on December 3, 1911, in Milan, Italy. He was born into a family with a strong background in music. Rota was a well-known young talent—his first oratorio, L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written when he was 11 years old and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923. At age 13, he composed a three-part musical play, Il Principe Porcaro, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. This work was published in 1926.

Rota studied music at the Milan Conservatory under Giacomo Orefice. Later, he continued his training in composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and Alfredo Casella at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. He graduated from this school in 1930.

With the support of the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States in 1930 and stayed there until 1932. He earned a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and composition with Rosario Scalero. After returning to Milan, Rota wrote a thesis about the Renaissance composer Gioseffo Zarlino. He later earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan, graduating in 1937. Rota began a teaching career that eventually led him to become the director of the Liceo Musicale in Bari, a position he held from 1950 until 1978.

Film scores

Nino Rota composed music for more than 150 films. One of his early works was The Glass Mountain (1949), which featured singing by Tito Gobbi. The film received several awards.

In the 1988 edition of The Concise Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Composers and Musicians, music scholar Nicolas Slonimsky called Rota "brilliant" and noted that his musical style was unique.

However, some critics did not approve of Rota’s habit of copying musical styles from earlier times. This practice sometimes included using his own earlier music or the work of others. A well-known example is his use of the Larghetto from Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings in E major as a theme for a character in Fellini’s La Strada.

During the 1940s, Rota composed scores for over 32 films, including Zaza (1944) by Renato Castellani. His partnership with director Federico Fellini began with Lo Sceicco Bianco (1952), followed by I Vitelloni (1953) and La Strada (1954). Their collaboration lasted for many years. Fellini once said:

At Fellini’s funeral, his wife, Giulietta Masina, asked trumpeter Mauro Maur to play Rota’s Improvviso dell’Angelo in a church in Rome.

Rota’s score for Fellini’s 8½ (1963) is often credited with helping the film feel unified. For Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Rota worked with Eugene Walter on the song “Go Milk the Moon,” which was not included in the final film. They later collaborated again on the song “What Is a Youth?” for Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.

The American Film Institute ranked Rota’s score for The Godfather number 5 on its list of the greatest film scores. After being nominated for an Academy Award for this score, the nomination was later canceled because Rota reused a theme he had written two decades earlier for the film Fortunella. The award was then given to Sleuth. Meanwhile, Limelight, a film that had not been shown in Los Angeles until 1972, won the Oscar. Rota later won an Oscar for his score for The Godfather Part II. His score for War and Peace was also nominated.

Rota’s work in film scores is mentioned in the song “Reno Dakota” on The Magnetic Fields’ album 69 Love Songs.

Orchestral, chamber and choral music

Rota composed many concert pieces and other orchestral works, as well as music for piano, chamber ensembles, and choirs. Much of his music has been recorded and released on CDs. After Rota died from heart failure in 1979, Hal Willner created a tribute album titled Amarcord Nino Rota in 1981. This album included music by several jazz musicians who were not well-known at the time but later became famous. In 2007, director Gus Van Sant used some of Rota’s music in his film Paranoid Park. Director Michael Winterbottom also used several pieces from Rota’s music in his 2005 film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. Composer Danny Elfman often mentions Nino Rota as a major influence, especially on his music for the Pee-Wee films. Director Mario Monicelli made a documentary titled Un amico magico: il maestro Nino Rota, which included interviews with Franco Zeffirelli and Riccardo Muti (a student of Rota at the Bari Conservatory). A German documentary titled Nino Rota – Un maestro della musica was made later. Both films explored Rota’s work in movies and his concert music.

Operas

In 1955, Rota created an opera called Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat), which is based on a play by Eugène Labiche. This opera was performed by the Santa Fe Opera in 1977. In 2005, Rota's opera Aladino e la lampada magica (Aladdin and the Magical Lamp), with Cosmin Ifrim playing the lead role, was performed in German at the Vienna State Opera and later released on DVD. Both Il cappello di paglia di Firenze and Aladino e la lampada magica are often performed in Europe, along with many of Rota's symphonic and chamber music works.

Rota's short opera, I due timidi (The Two Timid Ones), was written for a radio production by RAI in 1950. It was later performed by the Santa Fe Opera in May and June 2008 as part of their pre-season "One-Hour Opera" program. In 2022, the opera was also performed by London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of a 'Triple Bill' event.

Personal life and death

Rota had one daughter with pianist Magdalena Longari. Rota died in Rome on April 10, 1979, when he was 67 years old, due to coronary thrombosis.