“The Godfather”: How Nino Rota wrote a world hit

L’man was small, affable, inexhaustible, mischievous, charming; simply Italian. With him, the art of conversation was marvelous, made up of anecdotes and serious things. “E allora, vorrei un caffè, Jean-Luc? Fine. “With him, no question of a thirty-minute interview, but an uninterrupted dialogue of two hours. In English and French. As if nothing equaled this pleasure of conversing and unfolding his life as a musician, his position as director at the Bari Conservatory, of which he was very proud, his decisive meeting with Fellini (La Strada, Eight and a Half, La Dolce Vita), and his music for other filmmakers, Luchino Visconti (Cheetah ; Rocco and his brothers)Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet) and, of course, Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather). Difficult to…