RIP Giacomo Dell’Orso

 

Maestro Giacomo Dell'Orso has left us

Goodbye Giacomo Dell'Orso

Collonnesonore

By Massimo Privitera

September 9, 2024

Today Maestro Giacomo Dell'Orso left us and, sincerely, with a huge lump in my throat, I would like to remember him through a phone call that we had precisely on April 8 before the meeting in which his wife Edda Dell'Orso, famous vocalist of multiple soundtracks of our Cinema (many of those for Ennio Morricone), would have talked about her professional relationship with Maestro Piero Piccioni in a talk dedicated to him within the "Roma Film Music Festival", curated by me. The sweet, petite and affectionately loving Edda, while I was offering her a cappuccino with brioche at the bar, calls her 94-year-old husband, who has stayed at home for some health problems, to find out how he feels; suddenly he hands it to me on his cell phone, because Giacomo wants to thank me for inviting his wife to tell anecdotes of the glorious years of the Eighth Italian Art and to know himself how I, 52 years old, am certainly excited by such a phone call and so much tender thought towards me. I told Giacomo, an extraordinarily kind and humanly cordial man, as well as a great musician, who had a tried but gritty voice despite his venerable age, if he remembered our long interview at his Roman home together with Edda 18 years earlier, in 2006 (you can read it here), and he promptly replied yes, which had left him a good memory and a lot of esteem for me. Esteem that I have always poured into all the great Artisans of Film Music in our country (and beyond), as Giacomo Dell'Orso was rightfully so, that is, those who have composed a multitude of leitmotifs for films of all kinds, more than their much more emblazoned overseas colleagues, especially the latter remembered for having written for blockbuster or more trumpeted films and belonging to the so-called Serie A of the Seventh Art (and on this nomenclature there would be a lot to quibble but this is not the most appropriate moment).

In Italy we have had top composers of music for films (and not only: for TV and Theater) on a par with and even more (excuse the parochialism) than the rest of Europe and neighboring nations and, I repeat, our Dell'Orso, also known by the pseudonym of Oscar Lindok (born in Ofena near L'Aquila on December 2, 1930), composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, husband of the aforementioned well-known singer and vocalist Edda Dell'Orso and brother of the equally popular composer, producer and record publisher of GDM Music (a famous label among soundtrack lovers) Gianni Dell'Orso, was a worthy representative. After graduating in piano, organ and composition at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, until the age of 37 he taught mathematics to devote himself later and exclusively to music, his first real great passion, as an orchestrator, conductor (on TV he collaborated with Pippo Caruso and in the many scores of the singer and composer Nico Fidenco, his trusted friend), arranger and composer of soundtracks, including (not many to tell the truth), precisely for the aforementioned genre cinema, Emanuelle Nera by Bitto Albertini in 1975 with the collaboration of his brother Gianni, L'infermiera di mio padre in 1975 by Mario Bianchi, Belli e brutti ridono tutti in 1978 by Domenico Paolella (again in collaboration with Gianni), Caligula and Messalina of 1982 by Bruno Mattei, Christmas Holidays '91 by Enrico Oldoini together with his brother Gianni and Manuel De Sica. In addition to film music, he has released soundtrack albums for Rai, using the aforementioned pseudonym of Lindok and has written a lot of organ music for ecclesiastical celebrations.

DELL’ORSO, Giacomo (Pietro Giacomo Dell’Orso)

Born: 12/2/1931, Ofena, L'Aquila, Italy

Died: 9/9/2024, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Giacomo Dell’Orso’s westerns – conductor:

Those Dirty Dogs – 1973

Macho Killers – 1977