An hour of music by Nino Rota is an offer you can’t refuse.
Rota was born in Milan on this date in 1911. An extraordinarily prolific composer, he wrote some 150 film scores, from the 1930s until his death in Rome in 1979. That’s an average of three scores per year over a 46-year span. At the height of his productivity, from the late-40s to the mid-50s, he was writing up to ten scores a year, with a mindboggling 13 film scores to his credit in 1954.
Yet somehow, in his spare time, he managed to write ten operas, five ballets, and dozens of other orchestral, choral, and chamber works, and incidental music for the stage. As if that weren’t enough, he also taught at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, of which he was the director for almost 30 years.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we remember him on his birthday, with some of his best-known film scores.
For the 50th anniversary of its release, we’ll hear selections from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) and what many regard as one of the greatest sequels ever made, “The Godfather Part II” (1974). Taken collectively, this is some of the best-known and best-loved movie music ever written.
“The Godfather Part II” earned Rota his only Academy Award. But there was some controversy surrounding Rota’s contribution to its predecessor. His nomination for the original “The Godfather” was withdrawn at the eleventh hour, when it came to the Academy’s attention that the love theme had been used in a 1958 Italian comedy he had scored called “La Fortunella.” Puzzlingly, the music for the sequel went on to win the Oscar, although it featured the same theme that made the earlier score ineligible.
It could be argued that Rota was so prolific that, as was the case with many of his Baroque forebears, a certain amount of recycling was inevitable. We’ll listen to a selection from Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers.” Hearing it directly on the heels of “The Godfather,” you may find it unexpectedly familiar.
But lest we become too judgmental, remember Gioachino Rossini did much the same thing. And the Italian opera comparison is not inappropriate. Rota’s long-limbed melodies frequently evoke the heyday of Puccini and the Verismo School. This is most evident in his music written for another Visconti film, “The Leopard” (1963), after the poignant novel of Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
At the same time, Rota was also clearly influenced by the commedia dell’arte, or perhaps simply the world of the circus, which made him the ideal composer for the films of Federico Fellini, in which the most poignant melodies might be swept away at any moment by off-the-rails funhouse music. There would be no Danny Elfman without Nino Rota!
Rota’s association with Fellini began in 1952 with “The White Sheik.” It was the start of a working relationship that would span decades, until Rota’s death in 1979, and encompassed such classics as “La Strada” (1954), “Nights of Cabiria” (1957), “La Dolce Vita” (1960), and “8 ½” (1963). We’ll hear an impromptu suite made up of selections from all four. Such music could only be described as Felliniesque – or perhaps, more accurately, Fellini’s films should be described as Rotaesque.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli. Nino Rota sucks down all the espresso on his birthday, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
