Nino Rota is best known internationally for his film scores, especially the first two Godfather films and all the films of Federico Fellini. He was also a concert and opera composer, though the simplicity and melodiousness of his music made him a target of critics who were quick to accuse him of being rendered uncultured by his film work.

He was educated at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. While studying in the United States he gained a strong feeling for American popular song forms that served him well in all his music, but especially his cinema scores.

After World War II the Italian film industry was reviving and breaking new artistic ground, and Rota was seeking his musical style among the complex byways of twentieth-century musical theories. At this point he re-read the famous nineteenth-century French farce Chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat) by Eugene Labiche and Marc-Michele. The subject attracted him, and he began thinking of music in a style that continued the tradition of Italian comic opera. He and Ernesta Rota prepared a libretto. Rota began to work on this determinedly non-modernist work almost in secret, sketching out in pencil.

He sometimes played parts of it for friends, but mostly played it for friends. Several years later they urged him to take it up and finish it. After considerable searching he found the pencil sketches buried amongst other work he had begun during those years, and found that he actually had a hard time making them out.

At that point Simone Cuccia became the intendent of the Teatro Massimo of Palermo, Sicily. He heard of the opera and, without hearing a note, insisted that Rota permit him to present the opera. With that commitment Rota went forward with writing out a fair copy of the score, and the opera made its debut in April 1955. The title of the story was changed from The Italian Straw Hat to The Florentine Straw Hat—I Cappello di Paglia di Firenze.

Although critics had a hard time dealing with the simplicity and tunefulness of the score, the audiences gave it an ovation, which led to its 1958 production at Piccola Scala, the intimate small-opera theater of La Scala in Milan. This was also a huge success, and numerous other productions followed, including a video version for RAI, Italian Television, and a recording by RCA Italiana records.

The story is a complicated French sex farce that is set in motion when a nervous young bridegroom, out riding on the morning of his wedding, unwittingly compromises a lady when his horse munches on the straw hat she has left hanging on a branch of a park during an assignation. The bridegroom must find an exact duplicate so her husband will not suspect her, all the while fending off the suspicious of his own fiancée and her relatives, and still make it to his wedding on time.

© All Music Guide