Akademik

(1931-)

(Full name Rizerio Ortolani; at times also worked under the name Roger Higgins.) Musician, songwriter, film composer. One of the most prolific and versatile composers of Italian cinema, Ortolani graduated from the Gioacchino Rossini Conservatory in his native Pesaro before moving to Rome to work as a pianist and arranger for the national RAI radio. After writing a great deal of music for theater and television, in the mid-1950s he began composing for films, achieving his first major triumph with the soundtrack of Gualtiero Jacopetti's Mondo cane (A Dog's Life, 1962). The film's theme song, More, sung by Katyna Ranieri, became an international best seller, and Ortolani was nominated for both a Grammy and an Academy Award. He subsequently scored all of Jacopetti's "shockumentaries" while also collaborating with a wide variety of Italian and foreign directors, among them Vittorio De Sica, Dino Risi, Franco Zeffirelli, Anthony Asquith, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Robert Siodmak. He worked prolifically in all the popular genres but became especially identified with the giallo, providing memorable soundtracks for such classics as Umberto Lenzi's Cost dolce cost perversa (So Sweet. . . So Perverse, 1970) and Lucio Fulci's Non si sevizia un paperino (Don't Torture a Duckling, 1972). In the early 1980s, after having written the music for Ruggero Deodato's controversial Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, 1980), he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Pupi Avati, for whom he scored all the major films from Zeder (1982) to La cena per farli conoscere (The Get-Together Dinner, 2007). At the same time he also worked extensively for Italian television, writing the music for popular miniseries like Lapiovra (The Octopus, 1984), Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus, 1984), and Ama il tuo nemico (Love Your Enemy, 1999).

   With over 200 film scores to his credit, Ortolani has been nominated twice for the Oscar and four times for the Golden Globe. At home he has received three Nastri d'argento and four David di Donatello awards, the most recent for his score of Avati's Ma quando arrivano le ragazze? (When Will the Girls Arrive? 2005).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira