50 Fun Facts About Italian Music

Which Elvis Presley number one was set to the tune of the Neapolitan standard 'O sole mio?

It's Now or Never sold some 20 million copies and became his biggest international single; a 1949 Tony Martin record using the same melody inspired him to try it.

Which Venetian composer of The Four Seasons was nicknamed the Red Priest for the colour of his hair?

Antonio Vivaldi was ordained at 25 and wrote much of his music for the all-female ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venice home for abandoned children.

Which Domenico Modugno hit, officially titled Nel blu, dipinto di blu, won the first Grammy for Record of the Year?

Volare, meaning to fly, also took Song of the Year at that first Grammy ceremony in 1959, despite finishing only third at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Which Roman composer scored Sergio Leone's westerns, including the howling theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Ennio Morricone had been Leone's schoolmate as a boy, and after five losing nominations he finally won a competitive Oscar for The Hateful Eight.

Which 14-year-old prodigy is said to have written out Allegri's guarded Miserere from memory after hearing it in Rome?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart heard the piece on a 1770 visit, and the tale rests on a letter from his father Leopold; the Pope soon awarded the boy the Order of the Golden Spur.

Which Italian anti-fascist folk song found a new worldwide audience when the robbers sang it in Money Heist?

Bella ciao honours the partisans of the Italian resistance, yet there is little evidence it was sung during the war: the partisan version spread only after it ended.

Pianoforte, the full Italian name of the piano, literally promises that the instrument can play in which two ways?

Soft and loud was the selling point: unlike a harpsichord, the new keyboard let players change the volume by touch, and its long original name was soon cut down.

Which Rome rock band went from busking on Via del Corso to winning the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest?

Måneskin is a Danish word for moonlight, picked when the bandmates asked their half-Danish bassist Victoria De Angelis to toss out words from the language.

Which Rossini opera has an overture finale that became the theme of The Lone Ranger?

William Tell was the last of Rossini's 39 operas: after its 1829 premiere he went into semi-retirement, still in his thirties.

Which whirling southern Italian folk dance was once believed to cure the bite of a venomous spider?

Tarantella and tarantula share a root: both are named after Taranto in Apulia, where bite victims were said to dance for hours to sweat out the poison.

Which Ligurian seaside resort hosts the song festival that inspired the creation of the Eurovision Song Contest?

Sanremo first staged its festival in 1951 with only three acts, and it is now the world's longest-running annual national TV music competition.

Which Milan opera house is feared by singers for its merciless gallery fans, known as the loggionisti?

La Scala was built in the 1770s on the site of the church of Santa Maria della Scala, and simply kept the name.

La Fenice, the leading opera house of Venice, is named after which mythical creature?

The phoenix marked a comeback: the company named its new house for rising from the ashes after losing its old theatre, and La Fenice has itself been rebuilt after fires in 1836 and 1996.

Which Naples opera house, opened on a Bourbon king's name day, is the world's oldest continuously active opera venue?

Teatro di San Carlo opened in 1737, decades before the famous houses of Milan and Venice, and its horseshoe-shaped auditorium is the oldest in the world.

Which northern Italian city stages a summer opera festival in its Roman amphitheatre?

Verona has held opera seasons in its Arena since 1913, interrupted only by wars, and the building is among the best-preserved ancient amphitheatres anywhere.

Which tenor from Modena earned the nickname King of the High Cs after a 1972 night at New York's Met?

Luciano Pavarotti, a baker's son, hit nine high Cs in a single aria of La fille du régiment that night and took seventeen curtain calls.

Which Naples-born tenor became the first international recording star after cutting ten records in Milan in 1902?

Enrico Caruso was paid 100 pounds by the Gramophone Company for that first session, and went on to make about 250 commercial recordings.

Which Tuscan tenor's Con te partirò became a global hit when re-sung with Sarah Brightman as Time to Say Goodbye?

Andrea Bocelli and Brightman cut the duet as the theme for German boxer Henry Maske's 1996 farewell fight, and it became Germany's biggest-selling single.

Which Lombardy city was home to the violin workshops of the Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari families?

Cremona has been a centre of instrument making since the 16th century, and its traditional violin craftsmanship joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2012.

Which Puccini opera, the source of the aria Nessun dorma, had to be completed by Franco Alfano after Puccini's death?

Turandot stopped short at its 1926 premiere: the conductor turned to the audience and announced that the opera ended there, because at that point the maestro had died.

Which Verdi opera set in ancient Egypt was commissioned by Cairo's new opera house and first staged there?

Aida came about after Verdi said no: he declined the Khedive's request for a piece to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, then took up an Egyptologist's plot.

Which Verdi opera features the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, sung by Milan crowds as Verdi's funeral procession passed?

Nabucco made Verdi's name in 1842, and its exiles' chorus is still regularly encored; in 1981 a journalist proposed making it Italy's national anthem.

Which Puccini opera about penniless young artists in Paris was reworked a century later as the Broadway musical Rent?

La bohème gave Rent its plot and even a melody, with tuberculosis replaced by HIV/AIDS and Paris by New York's East Village.

Which Puccini opera, a disaster at its Milan premiere, follows a Nagasaki bride abandoned by an American officer?

Madama Butterfly was withdrawn after that 1904 first night and revised, and a memorial to Puccini now stands in a garden in the Japanese port where the story is set.

Which Leoncavallo opera about travelling clowns is usually staged in a double bill with Cavalleria rusticana?

Pagliacci has a true-crime root: Leoncavallo claimed he based it on a murder from his childhood, a case his father investigated as magistrate.

Which Rossini comic opera stars Figaro, the quick-witted fixer from the first of Beaumarchais's three plays?

The Barber of Seville was hissed and jeered at its 1816 premiere in Rome, where fans of an older setting of the story by Giovanni Paisiello stirred up the crowd.

Which Italian term for an opera company's leading female singer literally means first lady?

Prima donna became an insult because of the stars themselves: their grand, demanding off-stage manner made the title shorthand for anyone temperamental.

Which Italian tempo marking, literally meaning cheerful, tells musicians to play at a brisk and lively speed?

Allegro still carries a hint of joy from its everyday Italian meaning, whereas the even faster marking presto simply means quickly.

Which Italian word for the sung and spoken text of an opera literally means little book?

Libretto is the diminutive of libro, the Italian for book, and the texts are still printed as separate booklets and tucked into opera recordings.

The word opera, first applied to sung drama in 17th-century Italy, literally means what in Italian?

Work is the plain meaning, covering both the labour and its result; the Italian word comes from Latin, where it doubles as the plural of opus.

Which Genoese violin virtuoso was denied a church burial partly because of his rumoured association with the devil?

Niccolò Paganini had also refused the last rites, thinking them premature, and it took four years and an appeal to the Pope before his body could even be moved home.

Which composer wrote L'Orfeo for the Mantua court in 1607, the earliest opera still regularly performed today?

Claudio Monteverdi was not the first: Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognised as the earliest opera and his Euridice as the oldest to survive, but neither holds the stage.

Which Padua-born harpsichord maker to the Medici court is credited with inventing the piano around 1700?

Bartolomeo Cristofori had built three pianos by 1711, and only three of his instruments survive today, all dating from the 1720s.

Which South Tyrol-born producer, dubbed the Father of Disco, built Donna Summer's I Feel Love around a Moog synthesizer?

Giorgio Moroder went on to win three Oscars: one for the Midnight Express score and two for the songs Flashdance... What a Feeling and Take My Breath Away.

Which Milan-born composer wrote the music for The Godfather after years of scoring Federico Fellini's films?

Nino Rota was a child prodigy who wrote his first oratorio at 11, and he won his Academy Award for The Godfather Part II.

Which 1982 Laura Branigan hit was an English-language remake of a song by the Italian star Umberto Tozzi?

Gloria reached number two on the US Hot 100 for Branigan, whose team first tried a romantic version retitled Mario before rewriting the lyrics.

Which Turin dance group reached number one in at least 18 countries in 1999 with Blue (Da Ba Dee)?

Eiffel 65 built the track around a piano hook by keyboardist Maurizio Lobina, yet it stalled at number three in Italy itself.

In which Italian city did the Camerata, a circle of poets and musicians, pave the way for the first operas?

Florence hosted the group at the house of Count Giovanni de' Bardi, where members included Vincenzo Galilei, father of the astronomer Galileo.

Which clay wind instrument, later made famous by a Legend of Zelda game, was invented in Budrio near Bologna?

Ocarina means little goose in the Bolognese dialect; Giuseppe Donati was 17 when he named it in 1853, having turned a simple toy into a proper instrument.

Which Italian blues-rock star, born Adelmo Fornaciari, performs under a nickname his primary school teacher gave him?

Zucchero is the Italian word for sugar, and the nickname stuck through early bands with names like Sugar & Candies.

Which star castrato, born Carlo Broschi, was called to Madrid in the hope of singing away King Philip V's depression?

Farinelli ended up running the Spanish court's opera productions, staging illuminations and firework displays that once used 60 thousand candles.

Castelfidardo, a town in Italy's Marche region, is known as the international capital of builders of which instrument?

Accordion making there goes back to Paolo Soprani, one of the first large-scale producers, whose memory the town still honours.

Which young Genoese poet wrote the words of Italy's national anthem before dying of a wound suffered defending Rome?

Goffredo Mameli's hymn was adopted as a provisional anthem in 1946 and gained full legal status only in 2017, after many failed attempts.

Which German composer used Funiculì, Funiculà in a tone poem, believing it was a folk song, and was sued for it?

Richard Strauss heard the tune on a tour of Italy six years after Luigi Denza wrote it to mark the opening of a funicular on Vesuvius; Denza won and collected a royalty.

Which Italian star's 1972 song Prisencolinensinainciusol is pure gibberish written to sound like American English?

Adriano Celentano meant it as a song about the inability to communicate rather than a novelty; fans call him the springy one for his energetic dancing.

Which Italian singer won a Golden Globe for Io sì (Seen), the first Italian-language song to take that award?

Laura Pausini broke through in 1993 by winning the newcomers' section of Italy's best-known song festival with La solitudine, and has sold over 70 million records.

Which ancient Roman ruins hosted the first Three Tenors concert on the eve of the 1990 World Cup final?

Baths of Caracalla drew a television audience of around 800 million that night, and the concert raised money for José Carreras's leukemia foundation.

Which Renaissance Prince of Venosa, famed for daringly chromatic madrigals, killed his wife and her lover?

Carlo Gesualdo caught the pair together at a palace in Naples in 1590; his music uses a chromatic language not heard again until the late 19th century.

Which 11th-century Benedictine monk, summoned to Rome by Pope John XIX, is regarded as the inventor of staff notation?

Guido of Arezzo also taught singers the ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la syllables, and his methods let choirs learn large amounts of music quickly, to the resentment of his fellow monks.

Which Parma-born conductor, famed for his photographic memory, was the NBC Symphony Orchestra's first music director?

Arturo Toscanini began as a cellist: on an 1886 tour of Brazil, aged 19, he left his seat in the orchestra to rescue a performance and conducted the entire opera from memory.