He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo De Filippo[3] as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

[1] Rota was a renowned child prodigy – his first oratorio, L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written at age 11[4] and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy after Hans Christian Andersen, Il Principe Porcaro, was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926.

He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, where he was taught conducting by Fritz Reiner and had Rosario Scalero as an instructor in composition.

Rota earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan, graduating in 1937, and began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Liceo Musicale in Bari, a title he held from 1950 until 1978.

However, his most durable compositions are related to his music for the cinema; he composed the soundtracks of a great number of films by the Italian director Federico Fellini covering the period from 1950 to 1979.

One of the most noticed examples of such incorporation is his use of the Larghetto from Dvorák's Serenade for Strings in E major as a theme for a character in Fellini's La Strada.

His association with Fellini began with Lo Sceicco Bianco (The White Sheik) (1952), followed by I Vitelloni (1953) and La Strada (The Road) (1954).

[1] They continued to work together for decades, and Fellini recalled: The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don't even have to hesitate, was Nino Rota — between us, immediately, a complete, total, harmony ...

Rota wrote numerous concerti and other orchestral works as well as piano, chamber and choral music, much of which has been recorded and released on CD.