SIAMO UNA FAMIGLIA
Ennio Morricone, Cinematic Musical Genius, Had AMHS Connection
Perhaps some of the most poignant words written about the legacy of Ennio Morricone are these from the Washington Post tribute: “It takes nine little notes to bring me to the verge of tears no matter where I am when I hear them. The plaintive, lyrical opening measures of the score for the 1988 film Cinema Paradiso have become one of the most immediately recognizable themes in the history of movie music, instantly conjuring nostalgia, romance, longing, lost innocence. From nine simple notes, a welter of potent, bittersweet emotions.” The music for Cinema Paradiso was just one of the more than 400 film scores, across all film genres, composed by Ennio Morricone, who passed away on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.
He was the prolific composer of soundtracks for films including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Mission and The Hateful Eight. And the beautiful voice you hear on many of those soundtracks belongs to Edda Sabatini Dell’Orso, the cousin of AMHS member Romeo Sabatini. Romeo, our longtime webmaster and Notiziario editor, says he can count at least 10 movies which Ennio Morricone scored and his cousin Edda was the main singer. He says Edda was chosen to sing Morricone’s music because of the unique wide range of her voice which spanned more than three octaves. Starting in 1966, Romeo said Morricone gave her the soloist parts in his movie scores, among the most noteworthy of which are The Good the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) and Once Upon a Time in the West, both movies by Sergio Leone. Both of Edda’s parents are Abruzzese from Villa Santa Maria in Chieti, which is also Romeo’s ancestral town. He said Edda was born in Genoa where her parents had temporarily moved in the 1930s because her father worked on the transatlantic liner the Rex. Edda’s family inherited the ancestral home in
Ennio Morricone (left) and Edda Sabatini Dell’Orso
Villa Santa Maria where she spends summers with the whole family (including 7 grandchildren), and Romeo adds that she participates fully in the town’s cultural life and festivities. If ever a name was synonymous with movie soundtracks, it was Ennio Morricone, although it took the Hollywood film industry until 2007 to reward Morricone with an honorary Academy Award, after he had been nominated on five separate occasions without winning an Oscar. He finally won an Oscar in 2015 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. But Morricone, a native of Rome, always kept his distance from Hollywood and made a point of remaining in his native Italy, even declining to learn English.
While the world knew him as the man who made spaghetti westerns with Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, Morricone always viewed himself as a composer for whom film work was only a part of his career. In a moving text issued after his death, Morricone thanked his family and close friends for their companionship, naming his children and grandchildren and saying: “I hope they understand how much I loved them.”He dedicated “the most painful goodbye” to his wife of 64 years, saying, “to her I renew the extraordinary love that bound us together and I am sorry to abandon.” After his passing, Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi announced that the music of the legendary film composer will be played over the metro of his hometown Rome for 24 hours on a date to be determined. A mural of Morricone appeared near his home the day after he died. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said it so well: “We will remember forever and with infinite gratitude the artistic genius of Maestro Ennio Morricone. He made us dream, he moved us and made us think, writing unforgettable notes that will remain forever in the history of music and cinema.”
“Small World” Story From Dick DiBuono
Former AMHS President Richard DiBuono, now living in Massachusetts, has an interesting story to share with AMHS members about a conversation he had in early June with Father Ezio Marchetto, pastor of Holy Rosary Church. During a recent visit to his sister in Danvers, Massachusetts, she gave Dick some of their parents’ original recorded vital records — birth, marriage and death certificates. Dick, who has long been interested in genealogy, previously had copies of them, which he had long ago used in creating his family tree data base, but not the originals. He said when he took time to look at his parents’ certificate of their marriage in 1939 at Saint Tarcisius church in Framingham, Massachusetts, he was surprised to see that the priest who performed the ceremony was named Emilio Donanzan. The surname, Donanzan, was familiar to Dick from his time attending meetings at Casa Italiana and, occasionally, going to Holy Rosary Church, so he phoned Father Ezio to ask if he knew the relationship between this Emilio Donanzan and the Cesare Donanzan who he recalled had been pastor of Holy Rosary for about 20 years.
Father Ezio informed Dick that they were brothers and that there was a third brother, also in the Order of the Missionaries of Saint Charles, or Scalabrinians, who served somewhere in California. When Dick mentioned to Father Ezio the fact that his parents were married in Framingham, Massachusetts, Dick said Father Ezio immediately knew that it was the Scalabrinians’ Saint Tarcisius parish, which at that time was serving an Italian immigrant community (most from Le Marche, like Dick’s maternal grandparents) and now is serving Brazilian immigrants. As Dick says, another “small world story” is told. ❚