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Nico Fidenco, 1933-2022
Singer, songwriter and film composer Nico Fidenco died in Rome on November 19, 2022, at the age of 89.
One of the most versatile figures in Italian popular music, Fidenco enjoyed enormous success as a singer during the early 1960s before developing a second career as a prolific composer for cinema. He wrote music for more than 80 films, particularly spaghetti westerns, thrillers, erotic dramas and horror pictures, and became especially associated with the Black Emanuelle series.
Fidenco was born Domenico Colarossi in Rome on January 24, 1933. His family moved to Asmara in Eritrea when he was a child, returning to Italy in 1949. Initially interested in filmmaking, he studied at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and worked as an assistant director while attending university. Music remained a private passion until RCA executive Vincenzo Micocci heard his demos and invited him to sing “What a Sky,” the theme from Francesco Maselli’s I Delfini (1960). The record became an immediate success.
His greatest popular triumph followed in 1961 with “Legata a un granello di sabbia.” Rejected by the Sanremo Festival, the song nevertheless became one of Italy’s first great summer hits, spending 14 weeks at number one and becoming the first Italian single to sell more than a million copies. Other successful songs included “Con te sulla spiaggia,” “A casa d’Irene,” “Se mi perderai” and “La voglia di ballare,” while Fidenco also recorded Italian versions of prominent film themes including “Moon River,” Exodus and The World of Suzie Wong. Read more…
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