Ennio Morricone, the genius, the man, the father
Marco Morricone, Valerio Cappelli
272 pages
Release year 2024
Price €18.90
Sperling & Kupfer edition
From a half-open door, a child secretly watches a man bent over a desk. He has large square glasses and a crew-neck sweater, he is deeply absorbed, he draws signs on a pentagram: his body is there, in the center of the room, but the mind and spirit that inhabit it seem projected elsewhere, far away. «He was my father, but there was a sidereal distance between me and him.» It is starting from this deep core of mystery that decades later, that child, Marco Morricone, Ennio’s firstborn, tries to tie the threads of memories with those of Valerio Cappelli, historic signature of the Corriere della Sera and lifelong friend of the composer , to give us an unprecedented, surprising and authentic portrait of one of the greatest musical geniuses our country has ever had. The studies interrupted after the eighth grade, the evenings spent playing for the American soldiers, the obsession with music, the intense relationship with maestro Petrassi, spirituality, the meetings with Sergio Leone, Joan Baez, Clint Eastwood, the success, the Oscars, the gentleness and harshness of a father (the prohibition for his children to listen to music at home), the passion for Roma, the gluttony for the chocolates that his wife Maria hid from him, the ostracism suffered by the academic world . A lifelong journey, including first-hand accounts and revealed background stories. An Ennio Morricone like it has never been told before.
MARCO MORRICONE, entrepreneur, is the first of Ennio Morricone’s four children. He was born in Rome in 1957 and, after completing his classical studies, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at La Sapienza University of Rome. He has been married to Monica since 1986 and is the father of two daughters, Francesca and Valentina. He worked for thirty years at the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers and, starting from the 1990s, he followed the concert activity of his father Ennio, accompanying him all over the world. Since 2017 he has been involved in initiatives related to the third sector and is the President of Armonica, a non-profit organization he founded together with his wife and daughters.
VALERIO CAPPELLI, born in Rome in 1958, graduated in History of the Enlightenment. He began working on the Spettacoli editorial staff of Corriere della Sera at the age of twenty, in 1978. He writes about the main Italian and international events in cinema and classical music. He hosted programs on Radio 2 and worked on Mixer on Rai 2. He is the author of six comedies (for which he collaborated with actors and directors such as Sergio Castellitto, Isabella Ferrari, Sergio Rubini, Massimo Popolizio, Pier Luigi Pizzi), of a book- interview with Renzo Piano on the birth of the «Ennio Morricone» Auditorium Parco della Musica and the novel There are loves that never happen.
