Roberto Nicolosi

One of only two composers to start out as a dentist (the other being English-born Wilfred Josephs) Roberto Nicolosi was born in Genoa in 1914. As well as gaining a degree in medicine, he also won a diploma in composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music in Milan. After several years in Milan as a practising dentist, Nicolosi began to win popularity in the 1940s as a leading jazz musician in Italy, at first playing piano, violin, trumpet, vibraphone or double-bass, then conducting and arranging for radio and records. Moving to Rome, he wrote musical criticism and worked in nightclubs and theatres. His movie break-through came in 1954 with the score for Folco Quilici's documentary The Sixth Continent (1954). In 1957 Nicolosi turned his attention to the Italian epics. Although an unlikely choice to score historical movies, he turned out to be a master of the genre, with a fine symphonic style far removed from his jazz persona. In all he turned out fifteen Italian epic scores before the craze petered out in the mid-1960s. Having retired from films in 1971, Roberto Nicolosi passed away in 1989 in a Rome hospital.