MusicFor some, he merely wrote the score of The Godfather. For the slightly more knowledgeable, he composed all the best Fellini scores. For the still better informed, he also provided many other directors with scores, and was one of our finest film composers. But only the elite knows him as also a true and important classical composer of some 300 works including instrumental, chamber, symphonic, and sacred music, songs, and operas. He is the Milanese Nino Rota (1911–1979), and the name, Italian for “wheel,” suited one who smoothly glided from one kind of music to another. Most reference works, like the big new Oxford Dictionary of Music, ignore him; only recently have others caught on (e.g., The Oxford Dictionary of Opera: “unabashedly tuneful and direct in appeal”). Confusion reigns: the Grove Dictionary of Opera lists ten Rota operas, the Harvard Biographical Di ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 19 September 2000, on page 53 Copyright © 2010 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rota-simon-2354
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On the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, Yefim Bronfman with the New York Philharmonic, Radu Lupu & the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Bernarda Fink at Alice Tully Hall, Simon Boccanegra and Stiffelio at the Metropolitan Opera & the Daedalus Quartet at the Chamber Society Music of Lincoln Center. On Elektra, Carmen & Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, Messiah at the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall & Anthony McGill at the Metropolitan Museum. On the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, Ricardo Muti, Esa Pekka-Salonen & Cristof von Dohnányi conducting the New York Philharmonic, From the House of the Dead & The Tales of Hoffman at the Metropolitan Opera, Angelika Kirsch at Alice Tully Hall & Chanticleer’s Christmas concert at the Metropolitan Museum.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
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