Name	Dulce Pontes
Background	solo_singer
Born	April 08, 1969
Died
Genre	Fado, world music, classical, pop
Occupation	vocalist, musician, songwriter, actor
Years active	1992–present
Label	Universal
Url	www.dulcepontes.net/.

Dulce José Silva Pontes (born April 8, 1969) is a Portuguese songwriter and singer who performs in many musical styles, including pop, folk and classical music. She is usually defined as a world music artist. Her songs contributed to the 1990s revival of Portuguese urban folk music called fado.

Biography

Pontes was born in 1969 in Montijo, a small city in the District of Setúbal, not far from Lisbon. Trained as a pianist, she became a singer after entering a competition in her hometown at age 18. She soon became an actress in Portuguese television and theater. In 1991 she won the national music festival with her song "Lusitana Paixão" (known in English as "Tell Me"), which led her to represent Portugal at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she finished 8th, which to date is the fourth-best finish for a Portuguese performer in this contest).

"Canção do Mar" (Song of the Sea), one of her many international hits, was later recorded by Sarah Brightman, under the name "Harem", and became a #1 Dance & Crossover hit in the US for Brightman.

Pontes started her career as a mainstream pop artist, but over the years she has evolved to become a world music singer. She blends traditional fado with contemporary styles and searches out new forms of musical expression. She introduced musical traditions of the Iberian Peninsula in her work, rediscovered many long forgotten popular tunes and found use for obsolete musical instruments. Her work is inspired and influenced not only by Iberian musical tradition, but also Arabic, African, Brazilian and Bulgarian sounds. She sings mostly in her native Portuguese, as well as Spanish, Galician, Mirandese, Italian, English, Arabic and Greek.

Dulce Pontes has collaborated with Cesária Évora, Caetano Veloso, Marisa Monte, Carlos Núñez, the Chieftains, Kepa Junkera, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, George Dalaras, Andrea Bocelli (O Mar e Tu, duet sung by Pontes in Portuguese and Bocelli in Neapolitan, for his 1999 album Sogno), and others. Her song "Canção do Mar" appeared on the soundtrack of Hollywood film Primal Fear. A 30-second piece of that same song serves as the theme to the NBC police drama Southland. Her album Focus is the fruit of a collaboration with Italian composer Ennio Morricone with whom she has also performed live.

In June 2006, Pontes prepared her double LP O Coração Tem Três Portas (The Heart Has Three Doors). It was recorded live without an audience in Convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar and St Mary Church in Óbidos. According to the artist, it is "her most personal and intimate album." It includes Portuguese folk music, mostly fado. " It was released in December 2006.

In 2009, Pontes released Momentos, a double disc collection that includes songs from her 20 year career as well as several previously unreleased tracks. Currently, she is working on an album of all new songs which is titled Nudez.

Discography

Lusitana (1992)

Lágrimas (1993) (Tears)

Brisa do Coração (1995) (Breeze of the heart) - album live recorded during a concert held May 6, 1995 in Porto

Caminhos (1996) (Paths)

O Primeiro Canto (1999) (The first chant/song)

Best Of (2002)

Focus (2003)

O Coração Tem Três Portas (2006) (The heart has three doors) - including a DVD, recorded live in a convent and church

Momentos (2009) (Moments)

References

External links

Pontes's Official Website Aviv Productions site Universal Music site

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:People from Setúbal District Category:Portuguese female singers Category:Portuguese-language singers Category:Spanish-language singers Category:Galician-language singers Category:Italian-language singers Category:English-language singers Category:Portuguese Eurovision Song Contest entrants Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants of 1991 Category:Portuguese fado singers Category:Golden Globes (Portugal) winners

Name	Ennio Morricone
Background	non_performing_personnel
Born	November 10, 1928
Alias	Maestro
Genre	Film music, Classical music, Pop music, Jazz, Lounge music, Easy listening
Origin	Rome, Italy
Occupation	Composer, orchestrator, music director, conductor, trumpeter
Associated acts	Bruno Nicolai, Alessandro Alessandroni, Mina, Yo-Yo Ma, Mireille Mathieu, Joan Baez, Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman, Amii Stewart, Paul Anka, Milva, Gianni Morandi, Dalida, Catherine Spaak, Pet Shop Boys and others
Years active	1946 – present
Url	http://www.enniomorricone.it

Ennio Morricone, Grande Ufficiale OMRI (born November 10, 1928) is an Italian composer and conductor.

He is considered one of the most prolific and influential film composers of his era. Morricone has composed and arranged scores for more than 500 film and TV productions. He is well-known for his long-term collaborations with international acclaimed directors such as Sergio Leone, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, and Giuseppe Tornatore.

He wrote the characteristic film scores of Leone's Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). In the 80s, Morricone composed the scores for John Carpenter's horror movie The Thing (1982), Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988). His more recent compositions include the scores for Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997), Tornatore's The Legend of 1900 (1998) and Malèna (2000), De Palma's Mission to Mars (2000), Lajos Koltai's Fateless (2005), and Tornatore's Baaria - La porta del vento (2009).

Morricone has won two Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, five Anthony Asquith Awards for Film Music by BAFTA in 1979–1992 and the Polar Music Prize in 2010. He has been nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score during 1979–2001. He received the Academy Honorary Award in 2007 "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music".

Life and career

Classical music

Ennio Morricone was born in Rome, the son of Libera and Mario Morricone, a jazz trumpeter. Morricone wrote his first compositions when he was six years old and was encouraged to develop these natural talents. Compelled to take up the trumpet, he had first gone to the National Academy of Santa Cecilia to take lessons on the instrument at the age of nine. Morricone formally entered the conservatory in 1940 at the age of 12, enrolling in a four-year harmony program. According to various reports, he completed it in either two years or six months (date approximate). He studied the trumpet, composition, choral music, and choral direction under Goffredo Petrassi, who deeply influenced him and to whom Morricone has dedicated concert pieces.

These were the difficult years of World War II in the heavily bombed "open city"; the composer remarked that what he mostly remembered of those years was the hunger. His wartime experiences influenced many of his scores for films set in that period.

After he graduated, he continued to work in classical composition and arrangement. In 1946, Morricone received his trumpet diploma and in the same year he composed "Il Mattino" ("The Morning") for voice and piano on a text by Fukuko, first in a group of 7 "youth" Lieder. Other serious compositions are "Imitazione" (1947) for voice and piano on a text by Giacomo Leopardi and "Intimita" for voice and piano on a text by Olinto Dini.

In the early 1950s, Morricone began writing his first background music for radio dramas. Nonetheless he continued composing classical pieces as "Distacco I e Distacco II" for voice and piano on a text by Ranieri Gnoli, "Verra' la Morte" for contralto and piano on a text by Cesare Pavese, "Oboe Sommerso" for baritone and five instruments on a text by Salvatore Quasimodo.

Although the composer had received the "Diploma in Instrumentation for Band" (fanfare) in 1952, his studies concluded in 1954, obtaining a diploma in Composition under the composer Goffredo Petrassi. In 1955, Morricone started to write or arrange music for films credited to other already well-known composers (ghost writing). He occasionally adopted Anglicized pseudonyms, such as Dan Savio and Leo Nichols.

Morricone wrote more works in the climate of the Italian avant-garde. A few of these compositions have been made available on CD, such as "Ut", his trumpet concerto dedicated to the soloist Mauro Maur, one of his favorite musicians; some have yet to be premiered. From the mid-sixties and onwards, he was part of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, a group of composers who performed and recorded avant garde free improvisations, even scoring a few films during the 1970's.

Early pop arrangements

In 1956, Morricone started to support his family by playing in a jazz band and arranging pop songs for the Italian broadcasting service RAI. Performed by Mina, it was a standout track of Studio Uno 66, the fifth-biggest-selling album of the year 1966 in Italy. Morricone's sophisticated arrangement of "Se telefonando" was a combination of melodic trumpet lines, Hal Blaine–style drumming, a string set, a '60s Europop female choir, and intensive subsonic-sounding trombones. The Italian Hitparade #7 song had eight transitions of tonality building tension throughout the chorus. In the reader's poll conducted by the la Repubblica newspaper to celebrate Mina's 70th anniversary in 2010, 30,000 voters picked the track as the best song ever recorded by Mina. Throughout the '60s Morricone composed songs for other artists including Milva, Gianni Morandi, Paul Anka, Amii Stewart, and Mireille Mathieu.

Leone film scores

Well-versed in a variety of musical idioms from his RCA experience, Morricone began composing film scores in the early 1960s. The scores included psychedelic accompaniment for Mario Bava's superhero romp (1968). The next year marked the start of a series of evocative scores for Dario Argento's stylized thrillers, including The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969), The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971), and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1974). and Le Professionnel (1981) as well as the TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981). Morricone worked as the conductor of seasons 3 to 5 of the series. He also worked as the music supervisor for the television project La bibbia ("The Bible"). In the late 1990s, he collaborated with his son, Andrea, on the Ultimo crime dramas. Their collaboration yielded the BAFTA-winning Nuovo cinema Paradiso. In 2003, Ennio Morricone scored another epic, for Japanese television, called Musashi and was the Taiga drama about Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's legendary warrior. A part of his "applied music" is now applied to Italian television films.

Tours

Since 2001, Morricone has been on a world tour, the latter part sponsored by Giorgio Armani, with the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta, touring London (Barbican 2001; 75th birthday Concerto, Royal Albert Hall 2003), Paris, Verona, and Tokyo. Morricone performed his classic film scores at the Munich Philharmonie in 2005 and Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in London, UK, on 2006-12-01 and 2006-12-02.

He made his North American concert debut on January 29, 2007 Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City and four days later at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The previous evening, Morricone had already presented at the United Nations a concert comprising some of his film themes, as well as the cantata Voci dal silenzio to welcome the new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. A Los Angeles Times review bemoaned the poor acoustics and opined of Morricone: "His stick technique is adequate, but his charisma as a conductor is zero." Morricone, though, has said: "Conducting has never been important to me. If the audience comes for my gestures, they had better stay outside."

On December 12, 2007, Morricone conducted the Roma Sinfonietta at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, presenting a selection of his own works. Together with the Roma Sinfonietta and the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, Morricone performed at the Opening Concerts of the Belfast Festival at Queen's, in the Waterfront Hall on October 17 and 18, 2008. Morricone and Roma Sinfonietta also held a concert at the Belgrade Arena (Belgrade, Serbia) on February 14, 2009.

On April 10, 2010, Morricone conducted a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London with the Roma Sinfonietta and (as in all of his previous London concerts) the Crouch End Festival Chorus. On August 27, 2010, he conducted a concert in Hungary. Two other concerts took place in Verona and Sofia (Bulgaria) on 11 and 17 September 2010.

Academy Award

Morricone received an honorary Academy Award on February 25, 2007, presented by Clint Eastwood, "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music." With the statuette came a standing ovation. Though nominated five times, he had not previously received an Oscar. In conjunction with the honor, Morricone released a tribute album, We All Love Ennio Morricone, that featured as its centerpiece Celine Dion's rendition of "I Knew I Loved You" (based on "Deborah's Theme" from Once Upon a Time in America), which she performed at the ceremony. Behind-the-scenes studio production and recording footage of "I Knew I Loved You" can be viewed in the debut episode of the QuincyJones.com Podcast. The lyric, as with Morricone's Love Affair, had been penned by Oscar-winning husband-and-wife duo Marilyn and Alan Bergman. Morricone's acceptance speech was in his native Italian tongue and was interpreted by Clint Eastwood, who stood to his left. Eastwood and Morricone had in fact met two days earlier—for the first time in 40 years—at a reception.

Morricone and Alex North are the only composers to receive the honorary Oscar since the award's introduction in 1928.

Recent activity

Morricone provided the string arrangements on Morrissey's "Dear God Please Help Me" from the album Ringleader of the Tormentors in 2006.

Quentin Tarantino originally wanted Morricone to compose the soundtrack for his most recent film, Inglourious Basterds. However, Morricone refused because of the sped-up production schedule of the film. Tarantino did use several Morricone tracks from previous films in the soundtrack.

Morricone instead wrote the music for Baaria - La porta del vento, the most recent movie by Giuseppe Tornatore. The composer is also writing music for Tornatore's upcoming movie Leningrad.

Personal life

On 13 October 1956, he married Maria Travia and had his first son, Marco, in 1957. Travia has written lyrics to complement her husband's pieces. Her works include the Latin texts for The Mission. They have three sons and a daughter, in order of birth: Marco, Alessandra, Andrea [Andrew], and Giovanni.

Prizes and awards

1965 — Nastro d'Argento for A Fistful of Dollars

1967 — Diapason d'Or

1969 — Premio Spoleto Cinema

1970 — Nastro d'argento for Metti una sera a cena

1971 — Nastro d'argento for Sacco e Vanzetti

1972 — Cork Film International for La califfa

1979 — Oscar Nomination for Days of Heaven

1979 — Premio Vittorio de Sica

1981 — Premio della critica discografica for Il prato

1984 — Premio Zurlini

1985 — Nastro d'argento and BAFTA for Once Upon A Time In America

1986 — Oscar Nomination, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for The Mission

1986 — Premio Vittorio de Sica

1988 — Nastro d'argento, BAFTA, Grammy Award and Oscar Nomination for The Untouchables

1988 — David di Donatello for Gli occhiali d'oro

1989 — David di Donatello for Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

1989 — Ninth Annual Ace Winner for Il giorno prima

1989 — Pardo d'Oro alla carriera (Locarno Film Festival)

1990 — BAFTA, Prix Fondation Sacem del XLIII Cannes Film Festival and David di Donatello for Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

1991 — David di Donatello for Stanno tutti bene

1992 — Oscar Nomination for Bugsy

1992 — Pentagramma d'oro

1992 — Premio Michelangelo

1992 — Grolla d'oro alla carriera (Saint Vincent)

1993 — David di Donatello and Efebo d'Argento for Jonas che visse nella balena

1993 — Globo d'oro Stampa estera in Italia

1993 — Gran Premio SACEM audiovisivi

1994 — ASCAP Golden Soundtrack award (Los Angeles)

1995 — Premio Rota

1995 — Leone d'Oro Honorary award (Venice Film Festival)

1996 --Premio citta' di Roma

1996 — Premio Cappelli

1996 — Premio Accademia di Santa Cecilia

1997 — Premio Flaiano

1998 — Columbus Prize

1999 — Erich Wolfgang Korngold Internationaler Preis für Film

1999 — Exsquibbidles Film Academy lifetime achievement award

2000 — Golden Globe Award for The Legend of 1900 (1998)

2000 — David di Donatello for Canone inverso

2000 — Oscar nomination for Malèna

2002 — Honorary Degree by the "Seconda Università" of Rome

2003 — Golden Eagle Award for 72 Meters

2003 — Honorary Senator of the Filmscoring Class of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München

2006 — Grand Officer award from President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

2007 — Honorary Academy Award for career achievement

2007 — The Film & TV Music Award for Lifetime Achievement

2008 — Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental, performed by Bruce Springsteen

2008 — Knight in the Order of the Legion of Honor

2009 — Medal of Merits for Macedonia

2009 — America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation

2010 — Polar Music Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts

Discography

Ennio Morricone has sold over 50 million records worldwide, including 6.5 million copies in France and more than two million albums in Korea.

Top worldwide film grosses

Ennio Morricone has been involved with eight movies grossing over $25 million at the box office:

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Year !! Title !! Director !! Gross |- | 1966 || The Good, The Bad & The Ugly || Sergio Leone || $25,100,000 |- | 1977 || || John Boorman || $30,749,142 |- | 1987 || The Untouchables || Brian De Palma || $76,270,454 |- | 1991 || Bugsy || Barry Levinson || $49,114,016 |- | 1993 || In the Line of Fire || Wolfgang Petersen || $176,997,168 |- | 1994 || Wolf || Mike Nichols || $131,002,597 |- | 1994 || Disclosure || Barry Levinson || $214,015,089 |- | 2000 || Mission to Mars || Brian De Palma || $110,983,407 |}

Other successful movies with Morricone's work are Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2001) and Inglourious Basterds (2009), though the tracks used are sampled from older pictures.

Influence

Morricone's influence extends into the realm of pop music. Hugo Montenegro had a hit with a version of the main theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in both the United Kingdom and the United States. This was followed by his album of Morricone's music in 1968.

Aside from his music having been sampled by everyone from rappers (Jay-Z) to electronic outfits (the Orb), Morricone wrote "Se Telefonando", which became Italy's fifth biggest-selling record of 1966 and has since been re-recorded by Françoise Hardy, among many others, and scored the strings for "Dear God, Please Help Me" on Morrissey's 2006 "Ringleader of the Tormentors" album.

Morricone's film music was also recorded by many artists. John Zorn recorded an album of Morricone's music, The Big Gundown, with Keith Rosenberg in the mid-1980s. Lyricists and poets have helped convert some of his melodies into a songbook.

Morricone collaborated with world music artists, like Portuguese fado singer Dulce Pontes (in 2003 with Focus, an album praised by Paulo Coelho and where his songbook can be sampled) and virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma (in 2004), who both recorded albums of Morricone classics with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra and Morricone himself conducting.

Metallica uses Morricone's The Ecstasy of Gold as an intro at their concerts (shock jocks Opie and Anthony also use the song at the start of their XM Satellite Radio and CBS Radio shows.) The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra also played it on Metallica's Symphonic rock album S&M;. Ramones used the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as a concert intro. The theme from A Fistful Of Dollars is also used as a concert intro by The Mars Volta.

His influence extends from Michael Nyman to Muse. He even has his own tribute band, a large group which started in Australia, touring as The Ennio Morricone Experience.

In 2007, the tribute album We All Love Ennio Morricone was released. It features performances by various artists, including Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen and Metallica.

Lead singer Adam Trula of the rock group Murder By Death has cited Morricone as a major influence of the band, and their 2008 album Red of Tooth and Claw features the track "Theme (For Ennio Morricone)," an instrumental arrangement styled after Morricone's western sountracks.

British band Babe Ruth has covered several of his themes, most prominently in their song "The Mexican". The adventure video game Wild Arms by PlayStation features a soundtrack which is reminiscent of his work and includes a theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack.

In January, 2010, tenor Donald Braswell II released his album "We Fall and We Rise Again" on which he presented his tribute to Ennio Morricone with his original composition entitled "Ennio".

Trivia

The 2003 Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 makes extensive use of several Morricone pieces from several 1960s film scores. The 2009 film Inglourious Basterds also uses many Morricone pieces, as well as sharing "Il Mercenario (Ripresa)" with Kill Bill.

Ciarán Farrell was one of Ennio Morricone's students.

In 1990 the American singer Amii Stewart, best known for the 1979 disco hit "Knock On Wood", recorded a tribute album entitled Pearls - Amii Stewart Sings Ennio Morricone for the RCA label, including a selection of the composer's best known songs. Since the mid 1980s Stewart resides in Italy, the Pearls album features Rome's Philharmonic Orchestra and was co-produced by Morricone himself.

Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield of Metallica are fans of Morricone; from whom they took inspiration to write many songs, such as The Unforgiven (song).

The asteroid 152188 Morricone was named in Morricone's honour on 2007-06-01.

NBC Sports borrowed Morricone's theme from The Untouchables for use during the closing credits of their coverage of the 2000 American League Championship Series. This was accompanied by a video montage commemorating the network's final Major League Baseball telecast.

Mr. Bungle have covered several Morricone songs live including Muscoli Di Velluto from Malamondo and Main themes from Città Violenta, Una Lucertola Con La Pelle di Donna and Metti, Una Sera a Cena.

Fantômas did a cover of the main theme to Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion on their album The Director's Cut — an album of film soundtrack covers.

Chico Buarque recorded an album with Morricone in 1970 called Per Un Pugno di Samba when the former was exiled from Brazil.

Wall of Voodoo, of "Mexican Radio" fame, would perform medleys of famous pieces by Morricone at early live shows, as heard on their EP/live album The Index Masters.

Jackass Number Two uses his song "Ecstasy of Gold" at the beginning of the movie.

Rapper Immortal Technique samples "Ecstasy of Gold" in his song "Land of the Gun".

Italian thrash metal band Schizo recorded a cover of Morricone's "The Sicilian Clan" original soundtrack song for their 2007 album "Cicatriz Black".

The Vandals, in their 1984 album "Peace thru Vandalism", play their own version of the famous theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the introduction to the "Urban Struggle" track.

The English pop band Erasure covered the main theme of the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1988 as a B-side of their single Chains of Love. The band also performed this theme live during all the concerts of its 1992 tour.

Hans Zimmer's Parlay in Soundtrack is a tribute to Ennio Morricone's Man with a Harmonica.

Graeme Revell's scores was thought to have been inspired by Ennio Morricone's cult film and speghetti western scores.

British band Muse cites Morricone as an influence for the songs City of Delusion, Hoodoo, and Knights of Cydonia on their album, Black Holes and Revelations.. The band has recently started playing the song "Man With A Harmonica" live played by Chris Wolstenholme, as an intro to Knights of Cydonia.

The ambient electronic act The Orb sampled Morricone's "The Man With The Harmonica" (from the film Once Upon a Time in the West) in the opening to their 1990 single "Little Fluffy Clouds".

The final installment of the massively popular video game series, Metal Gear Solid, uses in Morricone's song "Here's to You", taken from the film Sacco e Vanzetti.

Inti-Illimani, in their 2004 Italian concert and album "Viva Italia", play their tribute of the Love Theme from "Cinema Paradiso".

The generic of Italiques 70's show produced by Marc Gilbert on French television used the soundtrack of Dio è con noi of Ennio Morricone, with a motion picture of Jean-Michel Folon that stayed the generic of the public channel for twenty years.

On 13 August 2008 at Marlay Park in Dublin, Christopher Wolstenholme of Muse Played Ennio's "Man with the Harmonica" on harmonica before the band ended their set with Knights of Cydonia (A song with Morricone's classical influence).

The Bandini remix of the Ecstasy of Gold is used in Nike's "Leave Nothing" commercial with Ladainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu and directed by David Fincher.

Jay-Z rapped over "Ecstasy of Gold" in the track "Blueprint2" off of "The Blueprint 2: The Gift & the Curse".

Chi Mai is used in song Heartless by Black Attack from 1998.

Independent pro wrestler Eddie Kingston uses The Ecstasy of Gold as his entrance music.

The UK electronic band The Prodigy sampled The Big Gundown into their version of the song. Which can be found on the Lost Beats EP included with the 2009 album Invaders Must Die.

American thrash metal band Metallica plays "The Ecstasy of Gold" soundtrack before they play their set at almost every concert. They have been doing so since the 1980s.

The Book of Eli (2010) film depicts Ray Stevenson whistling Once Upon a Time in America in a car while examining a machete.

Canadian band Les Georges Leningrad recorded a song entitled "Ennio Morricone".

The UK band Mamma Freedom who are on the same roster as Ennio Morricone cite him as an influence on their more orchestral songs.

Morricone's "Tema Di Alì" from The Battle of Algiers is used in the Michael Jordan "Field Generals" Nike Commercial.

The teaser trailer for Frank Miller's The Spirit used Morricone's opening theme from The Untouchables.

Sources

Horace, B. Music from the Movies, film music journal double issue 45/46, 2005: ISSN 0967-8131

Miceli, Sergio. Morricone, la musica, il cinema. Milan: Mucchi/Ricordi, 1994: ISBN 88-7592-398-1

Miceli, Sergio. "Morricone, Ennio". The Nesw Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

Poppi, R., M. Pecorari. Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film vol. 3. Dal 1960 al 1969. Gremese, 1993: ISBN 88-7605-593-2

Poppi, R., M. Pecorari. Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film vol. 4. Dal 1970 al 1979* A/L. Gremese, 1996: ISBN 88-7605-935-0

Poppi, R., M. Pecorari. Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film vol. 4. Dal 1970 al 1979** M/Z. Gremese, 1996: ISBN 88-7605-969-5

Poppi, R., M. Pecorari. Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film vol. 5. Dal 1980 al 1989* A/L. Gremese, 2000: ISBN 88-7742-423-0

Poppi, R., M. Pecorari. Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film vol. 5. Dal 1980 al 1989** M/Z. Gremese, 2000: ISBN 88-7742-429-X

References

Further reading

Lhassa, Anne, and Jean Lhassa: Ennio Morricone: biographie. Les Planches. Lausanne: Favre; [Paris]: [diff. Inter-forum], 1989. ISBN 2-8289-0418-0,

Wagner, Thorsten. "Improvisation als 'weiteste Ausdehnung des Begriffs der aleatorischen Musik': Franco Evangelisti und die Improvisationsgruppe Nuova Consonanza". In ...hin zu einer neuen Welt: Notate zu Franco Evangelisti, edited by Harald Muenz,.48-60, 2002. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag. ISBN 3-89727-177-X.

Webb, Michael D. Italian 20th Century Music: The Quest for Modernity. London: Kahn & Averill. ISBN 978-1-871082-89-0

External links

Ennio Morricone myspace

The Ennio Morricone Online Community

Once upon a Time in the West">Streaming audio of Morricone's "The Man with the Harmonica," from his soundtrack to Once upon a Time in the West

TÊTE-À-TÊTE: Ennio Morricone by Nic Harcourt at Los Angeles Times Magazine

Category:1928 births Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia alumni Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Italian composers Category:Italian film score composers Category:Living people Category:People from Rome (city) Category:Spaghetti Western composers

Name	Andrea Bocelli
Background	solo_singer
Born	September 22, 1958Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy
Instrument	Vocals, keyboards, flute, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp, harmonica, guitar, drums, melodica
Voice type	Tenor
Genre	Adult contemporary, classical, easy listening, Latin pop, opera, operatic pop, pop, vocal
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist
Years active	1992–present
Label	Universal, Philips, PolyGram, Decca, Sugar
Url	Andrea Bocelli

Andrea Bocelli, Born with poor eyesight, he became totally blind at the age of twelve following a soccer accident.

Since winning the Newcomers section of the Sanremo Music Festival in 1994, Thus, he is the biggest-selling solo artist in the history of classical music.

In 1998, he was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. In 1999, his nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards marked the first time a classical artist had been nominated in the category, since Leontyne Price, in 1961. The Prayer, his duet with Celine Dion for the animated film, The Quest for Camelot, won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.

With over 5 million units sold worldwide, Sacred Arias became the biggest-selling classical album by a solo artist of all time, and a number of other countries in Europe and Latin America.

In 2006, Bocelli was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic,

Early life

at Lajatico, Tuscany]]

Childhood and Education

Bocelli was born in 1958 to Alessandro and Edi Bocelli. They lived on the family farm, selling farm machinery and making wine in the small village of La Sterza, a frazione of Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy, which is about 40 km south of Pisa. Bocelli's mother and younger brother Alberto still live in the family home. Bocelli's father died in 2000.

As a young boy, Bocelli showed a great passion for music. His mother has said that music was the only thing that would comfort him. At the age of six he started piano lessons, and later also learned to play the flute, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp, guitar and drums.

Bocelli would also spend time singing during his childhood. At the age of 14 he won his first song competition, the Margherita d'Oro in Viareggio with O sole mio. Bocelli signed with the Sugar Music label in Milan after the group's president heard Bocelli sing Miserere and "Nessun Dorma" at a birthday party for Zucchero.

In December Bocelli entered the preliminary round of the Sanremo Music Festival in the category of Giovani, performing both parts of the duet Miserere. He won the preliminary competition with the highest marks ever recorded in the Newcomers section. On 28 December, he debuted in the classical world in a concert at the Teatro Romolo Valli in Reggio Emilia. Bocelli had been an agnostic, but around 1994, partly as a result of immersing himself in the works of Tolstoy, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith. He performed the hymn, Adeste Fideles in Rome before Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica at Christmas.

The song was included on his album Bocelli which was produced by Mauro Malavasi and released in spring. His third album, Viaggio Italiano, was released in autumn.

In 1996, Bocelli was invited to sing a duet with English soprano Sarah Brightman at the final bout of German IBF World Light-Heavyweight boxing champion Henry Maske. Brightman, a friend of Maske, approached Bocelli after she heard him singing "Con te partirò" whilst she was dining in a restaurant. Changing the title lyric of the song to "Time to Say Goodbye", they re-recorded it as a duet with members of the London Symphony Orchestra and sang it as a farewell for Maske. The single debuted atop the German charts, where it stayed for fourteen weeks. With sales nearing three million copies, and a sextuple platinum award, "Time to Say Goodbye" eclipsed the previous best-selling single by more than one million copies.

Back in Italy in Bologna on 27 September, he yet again sang before the Pope at the International Eucharistic Congress. On 19 October, he sang at the TeleFood benefit concert held in the Vatican City, and organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization to raise awareness about world hunger. On 25 October he received a Bambi award, an annual television and media prize awarded by the German media company Hubert Burda Media, in the Klassik category in Cologne, Germany. On 19 April Bocelli entered the United States (USA) market with a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. followed the next day by a reception at the White House with then US President Bill Clinton. He was also named one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people of 1998. At the 41st Grammy Awards ceremony held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on 24 February, Bocelli was nominated in the Best New Artist category which was won by Lauryn Hill. Bocelli and Dion received a standing ovation after singing The Prayer.

In January 2001, Bocelli portrayed the main character in Pietro Mascagni's opera L'amico Fritz at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona and again performed the tenor part in Verdi's Requiem. On 19 March the Requiem album was released with Bocelli as tenor. From 22 March to 6 April he toured North America accompanied by Cecilia Gasdia and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. On 17 June he performed at the re-opening of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In July he performed two concerts in Dublin with Ana María Martínez and the New Symphony Orchestra. At the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice on 4 October he presented his new album Cieli di Toscana and was recognised for having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. In October he opened the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sicilian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini in Catania. On 28 October, he sang Franz Schubert's Ellens dritter Gesang as a representative of the Roman Catholic faith, during a memorial concert at Ground Zero in New York City for the victims of the September 11 attacks there. In November he received the Platinum Europe Award for one million sales of the album Cieli di Toscana, and at the Italian Music Awards he was given a special award from the Federation of the Italian Music Industry for his merits as an "Ambassador of Italian music in the world". He performed seven more concerts in the US accompanied by Ana María Martínez, and on 23 December, in front of the President of Italy and other guests of honour, he sang the Italian national anthem as well as works of Bellini and Verdi at the traditional Christmas concert in the Italian Senate, which was broadcast live on television for the first time.

2002–05: Sentimento and Andrea

In Berlin on 5 February he received a Goldene Kamera award in the "Music & Entertainment" category. On 6 March he received two World Music Awards in Monte Carlo: "World best selling classical artist" and "Best selling Italian artist". On 11 March, he gave a concert for peace at the Basilica di San Marco a Venezia in Venice, accompanied by the orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice and conducted by Lorin Maazel. On 15 March he took part in the opening of Walt Disney Studios Park in Marne-la-Vallée France. On 7 May Bocelli and Tony Renis received a Telegatto Italian Television award for the soundtrack of the series Cuore. On 23 May he received the 2002 Classical BRIT Award for "Outstanding Contribution to Music". On 27 May he performed at the Villa Madama in Rome in front of USA president George W. Bush and Italian president Silvio Berlusconi. On 28 May he took part in "Pavarotti & Friends" charity concert in Modena in aid of Angola. In June he again toured the USA, then on 26 July and 3 August he portrayed Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly at the 48th Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago. On 14 October he and Lorin Maazel presented his new album Sentimento to a worldwide audience. Further presentations took place in Milan and New York, and the album was released on 4 November, selling over two million copies in 40 days. On 24 October he started his Sentimento tour in Zürich which took in large arenas in several European and North American cities.

In February 2003, Bocelli performed Madama Butterfly in an exclusive Monte Carlo concert, which was attended by Caroline, Princess of Hanover. In March for the first time he appeared as a producer, at the Sanremo Festival, where the young artists Allunati and Jacqueline Ferry sang for his new record label, Clacksong. In May his second complete opera, Tosca, was released. At a private benefit gala for the Royal National Institute of Blind People Bocelli sang in front of the British Royal Family. On 24 May he performed in a benefit concert for the Arpa Foundation for Film, Music and Art in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, with sopranos Maria Luigia Borsi and Lucia Dessanti, baritone Soo Kyung Ahn, and violinist Ruth Rogers, accompanied by Marcello Rota and the Orchestra Città di Pisa. Three days later he was again invited to perform at "Pavarotti & Friends" in Modena and sang a medley of Neapolitan songs together with Pavarotti. In June he continued his Sentimento tour in Athens and Cyprus. In September he took part in a concert for the Justice ministers and Interior ministers of the European Union at the Parco della Musica in Rome. He then resumed his tour, accompanied by Maria Luigia Borsi, Ruth Rogers and Marcello Rota. In November he once again toured in the United States, this time accompanied by Ana Maria Martinez, Kallen Esperian and Steven Mercurio. In December he gave his first concert in China and at the end of the month sang Gounod's Ave Maria at Pavarotti's wedding in Modena.

In September he performed his "Once in a Lifetime" tour in Australia with concerts in Sydney and Melbourne and one concert in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he was joined on stage by New Zealand soprano Hayley Westenra. concert in Paris, in 2005.]] On 15 October he performed at the People Conference Hall in Beijing, China, and on 17 October at the Great Hall in Shanghai.

During early 2005 Bocelli was on tour including performances in Madeira, Hungary, Norway, USA, UK, Italy and Germany. He also appeared in Sesame Street singing "Time to Say Goodnight" a parody of Time to Say Goodbye as a lullaby to Elmo. On 21 March he performed on the Music for Asia benefit concert in Rome, televised on Italia 1, in aid of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake appeal.

In June he performed at the Deutsche Opera in Berlin. On 2 July he performed at the Paris concert as part of the Live 8 event. Also during the second part of the year, he performed in Croatia, Serbia, Italy, the US, Dubai, Switzerland and finally in Scandinavia.

On 26 February Bocelli sang "Because We Believe" from his Amore album in the Carnevale section of the closing ceremony of the Torino Olympics with a worldwide television audience. He also began another tour with a concert at the Piazza di Castello in Turin. In March he was honoured by the Italian state with a Grande Ufficiale Italian Order of Merit (Grand Officer of the Italian Republic), given to him by then President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi for his worldwide work for his country as a singer. The award was presented to him at the Sanremo Festival where he performed a duet with American singer Christina Aguilera on 4 March. and the tenor part from Gioachino Rossini's Messa di Gloria and in Naples where he took part in Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle. American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee performed at three of Bocelli's concerts in California from 9 June to 11 June singing duets of Somos Novios and The Prayer with Bocelli. They also performed on 'J. C. Penney Jam: The Concert for America's Kids and recorded duet versions of Somos Novios for the resulting album, and also Can't Help Falling in Love on the CD of the Under the Desert Sky DVD.

In June he sang the Italian duet version of "Because We Believe", "Ama, credi e vai", with Gianna Nannini at the "großen Fan Party" at the opening of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, in Berlin in front of billions of worldwide television viewers.

On 1 July 2007, Bocelli performed "The Music of the Night" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, in a special musicals medley during the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Bocelli returned to his home town for a triumphant concert at the newly created Teatro del Silenzio in Lajatico on 5 July 2007, with guest appearance by Kenny G, Heather Headley, Lang Lang, Elisa, Sarah Brightman and Laura Pausini. The concert was later released as Vivere Live in Tuscany. In September he debuted at the Avery Fisher Hall, in New York, with four concerts. October saw the release of the opera album of Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci with Bocelli singing the role of Canio. In November he won the "Best Italian Artist" and "World's Best-selling Classical Artist" awards at the World Music Awards. In December he finished his 2006 tour with more concerts in North America and Europe. , Japan, during his 2008 Asian Tour.]] To promote the album, he performed "Canto della Terra" at The Alan Titchmarsh Show on the BBC in London on 1 February; was interviewed by Fabio Fazio on the Italian talk show Che tempo che fa on RAI 3 in Italy; and performed "Canto della terra", "A te" and "Besame mucho" from the album, as well as "My way" on 2 February; and made an appearance on The South Bank Show in London, where he sang the French aria "Pour mon âme" on 3 February. Then on 10 February, he performed "The Prayer" at the 50th Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles, with Josh Groban in a tribute to Luciano Pavarotti, and sang "Dare to live" with Heather Headley the following day on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

On 7 May 2008, he sang at Steel Aréna in Košice, Slovakia, in front of 8,000 people. Then 13 May he sang at the "Teatro delle Muse" in Ancona, Italy, for a charity concert for "Francesca Rava – N.P.H. Italia Onlus", a foundation that helps poor and disabled children around the world.

On 2 June 2008 he performed at the Piazza del Duomo, Milan in front of 80,000 people during a concert celebrating the anniversary of the Republic of Italy's formation. Bocelli released the complete opera recording of Carmen in Italy in the same year, which he recorded in 2005. Myung-whun Chung conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Chœur de Radio France for the recording, and Welsh Bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, was part of the Ensemble. The recording was not released internationally, until March 2010. , a single-disc collection of some of the arias and duets of the recording, was also released in 2010.

On 20 July, Bocelli held his third concert at the Teatro del Silenzio in Lajatico, his hometown. The concert was a tribute to the cinema of Italy. Its performers included Italian composer and musician Nicola Piovani, Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle, Israeli singer Noa, and Charice. Then on 31 July, he performed at a concert in Vingis Park in Vilnius, Lithuania, in front of more than 18,000 people. Australian singer Tina Arena performed two duets with Bocelli -- "Canto Della Terra" and "The Prayer" -- at the closing stages of the concert.

On 7 August 2008, he held a benefit concert at Medjugorje, Bosnia Herzegovina, and was accompanied by Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

On 26 September 2008, during the 2008 Veneto Festival, he held a concert in the Church of the Eremitani in Padova, Italy, in front of about 1000 people. He was accompanied by the I Solisti Veneti orchestra, celebrating its 50th birthday and conducted by Claudio Scimone, and by the Wiener Singakademie choir. The concert was a celebration of Giacomo Puccini's 150th birthday.

On 10 October and 11 he performed at Petra, singing "Dare to live" with Laura Pausini, as well as performing E Lucevan le Stelle from Tosca. On 19 October he sang "O Surdato 'Nnamurato" and a duet of "Non Ti Scordar Di Me" with Cecilia Bartoli, both from the Incanto album, during the ECHO Awards in Germany; and later presented the soprano with an ECHO award. On 24 October, he performed at Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, as a tribute to the city, where he celebrated the Italian release of Incanto. Performing with him were flautist Andrea Griminelli, Italian pop singer Massimo Ranieri and soprano Cecilia Bartoli, with Steven Mercurio conducting the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. On 31 October, he performed a solo version of "The Prayer", as well as "Because", a song from Incanto, live on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

On 21 November and 22, Bocelli was amongst a quartet of soloists (soprano Sabina Cvilak, mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich and bass Alexander Vinogradov) to sing Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle, conducted by Plácido Domingo, at the Washington National Opera in Washington, DC. Bocelli sang twice in the piece and later the two famous tenors sang The Pearl Fishers duet which would be the first aria they had ever sang together. On 25 November and 26 he starred alongside soprano Verónica Villarroel in an opera in concert of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana at the "Municipal Auditorium" in San Antonio, Texas. He returned to the United Kingdom, December 16, for an appearance on The One Show, broadcast live by BBC One, and on The Alan Titchmarsh Show which aired December 18, on ITV1.

On November 21, a segment of Leute Heute, a German tabloid-program on ZDF, was about My Christmas and Bocelli's meeting in Rome with Pope Benedict XVI and 250 other artists, an event which was broadcasted live earlier that day in Italy, by Rai Uno. Bocelli was also joined by the Piccolo Coro dell'Antoniano, in his home in Forte dei Marmi, where they sang "Caro Gesù Bambino", a song from My Christmas which was originally recorded by the choir in 1960. Rai Uno also broadcast the performance later that day, during the Zecchino d'Oro Festival. The following day, Bocelli was among Fabio Fazio's guests, on his popular Italian talk-show, Che tempo che fa, broadcast on Rai Tre. During the program Bocelli talked about his album and performed "The Lord's Prayer", "White Christmas", and "Silent Night". It was also announced that Bocelli would return to the show on December 20 and give a live concert of My Christmas. Bocelli also took part in the annual 2009 José Carreras Gala, on December 17, where he sang Adeste Fideles, before singing "White Christmas" with José Carreras for the very first time; this was broadcast live, by Das Erste, in Germany. He then returning to Italy, for a concert in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, on December 19, which was broadcast directly after the Urbi et Orbi blessing of Pope Benedict XVI, December 25, on Rai Uno.

In North America, Bocelli gave 6 concerts. On November 28, he performed in the Bank Atlantic Center, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He later performed in the Air Canada Centre, in Toronto, Canada, in the Izod Center, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the William Saroyan Theatre, in Fresno, California (changed from the much larger Save Mart Center due to scheduling conflicts), in the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, and finally in the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California, on December 3, 5, 8, 12, and 13. His last three arena concerts alone grossed a total of over 5,6 million dollars, placing him third on Billboard Magazine's week's Hot Tours ranking, behind the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Il Divo, who both held over 5 times more concerts worldwide, compared to Bocelli's three in the U.S., explaining their better showings.

In the United States, Bocelli made a number of high profile TV appearances. He first performed "White Christmas" at the 83rd annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, broadcast live on NBC, November 26. He performed the song again on November 30 during The Today Show also live. His appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show during her Holiday Music Extravaganza, where he sang "What Child Is This", with Mary J. Blige, and later closed the show with Adeste Fideles, was also aired the same day, and was later rebroadcast on December 23. Bocelli also sang "Adeste Fideles" and was interviewed by Barbara Walters and Joy Behar on The View, which aired Decembe 2, on ABC. On December 8, he performed "Jingle Bells" with The Muppets on NBC's The Jay Leno Show. He also performed a number of songs from the album, including "The Christmas Song" with Natalie Cole, during a dinner at David Foster's mansion in Malibu, which was featured on The Dr. Phil Show, on December 10. Bocelli also performed "White Christmas" and "Silent Night", on the Larry King Live and Fox & Friends holiday-specials, broadcast December 23, on CNN, and December 19, 24 and 25, on Fox News.

In Brasil, following the success of the South American leg of the Incanto tour, were over 100,000 people attended his free concert at the São Paulo's "Parque Indipendencia", earlier in the year, it was announced that Bocelli would hold another Open-Air, entrance free, concert in Florianópolis, on December 28, where a crowd of about a million people was expected to attend. However, due to financial and political reasons, the concert was later canceled on short notice, along with all the other events scheduled for Christmas in the city.

2010: Hollywood Walk of Fame and FIFA World Cup

On January 31, 2010, during the 52nd Grammy Awards, Bocelli, Mary J. Blige and David Foster joined forces again, singing "Bridge over Troubled Water" to raise awareness for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. The three had previously made an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, January 28, 2010, to announce the performance.

On March 2, he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to Live Theater, at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the Roosevelt Hotel.

On March 12, Bocelli made an appearance on Skavlan, in Oslo, Norway, to promote his upcoming Scandinavian tour, giving a rare interview to the show's host Fredrik Skavlan, and later performing "Voglio Vivere Cosi", from his 2008 album Incanto, with Norwegian Boys' choir, Sølvguttene.

In April, he returned to Scandinavia, for a concert in Telenor Arena, in Oslo, Norway, on April 8, a concert in Forum Copenhagen, in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 9, and finally a concert in the Ericsson Globe, in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 11. He was joined by Tony Award winner Heather Headley and 120 musicians from the Stockholm Concert Orchestra, in all three concerts, and by Swedish mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman in his Swedish concert.

On April 30, Bocelli sang "Nessun Dorma" during the opening ceremony of the Expo 2010, in Shanghai, China, in front of twenty heads of state and government, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. The following day, on May 1, he held a concert, titled Charming China, at Shanghai Stadium, in front of an audience of 80,000 people, along with Chinese singers Song Zuying and Jay Chou, and Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang; the China Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied them under the direction of its artistic director Yu Long. The concert was later broadcasted by Shanghai TV, and by CCTV channels throughout mainland China.

The two appearances coincided with Bocelli's Asian tour, consisting of a concert in Budokan, Tokyo, Japan, on April 28, a concert in Jamsil Gymnasium, Seoul, South Korea, on May 2, a concert in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, in Hong Kong, on May 4, a concert in Taipei Arena, Taipei, Taiwan, on May 6, The concert was later broadcasted, in its entirety, by Channel NewsAsia, on May 28 and 29, and by Okto, on May 30, in Singapore. An orchid in the Botanic Gardens' National Orchid Garden was also named after Bocelli in response to the concert. Australian pop singer Delta Goodrem performed again with Bocelli in all five concerts, after suporing him in his U.S. My Chritmas 2009 winter tour.

On May 18, during the 2010 World Music Awards, Bocelli performed ""Un Amore Cosi Grande" from his 2008 album, Incanto, and received his seventh World Music Award, for "Best Classical Artist".

On July 5, Bocelli gave a concert at the opening of the Khan Shatyry Entertainment Center, in Astana, on the occasion of Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev's 70th birthday. Among the guests were, the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, the President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, the President of Tajikistan, Emomalii Rahmon, the President of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbayeva, the Crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the King of Jordan, Abdullah II.

On July 9, Bocelli headlined the "Celebrate Africa: The Grand Finale" Concert of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, at the Coca-Cola Dome, in Johannesburg, South Africa, to mark the end of the World Cup, two days before the World Cup final. During the concert, Bocelli was joined by Canadian rock star, Bryan Adams, Italian flautist, Andrea Griminelli, and South African singers, Nianell and Pretty Yende. FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, South Africain president, Jacob Zuma, and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, were among the 12,000 in attendance.

On July 13, Montenegrin Statehood Day, Bocelli gave a concert at the seaside resort of Sveti Stefan, in western Montenegro, to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Sveti Stefan Hotel. During the hour-long show, on a stage right in front of the island-hotel’s perimeter wall, Bocelli sang well-known arias, as well as some of his more popular hits, to the assembled dignitaries, including Montenegro’s top officials, representatives of the diplomatic corps and many faces from cultural, political and public life, as well as many current and former tourist entrepreneurs who had contributed to the development of Montenegrin tourism. A screening of the film Homage to Rome, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who was present during the event, and starring Bocelli, in his cinematographic debut, and Italian fashion model, Monica Bellucci, was shown prior to the special concert. The event was also attended by the President of the European Parliament, MEP, Jerzy Buzek, European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, Antonio Tajani, the Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, the President of Lazio, Renata Polverini.

On July 25, Bocelli held the fifth and final edition of the Teatro del Silenzio, in his hometown of Lajatico, Tuscany, to an audience of 10,000, double the amount of the first edition of the annual Festival, held in 2006. After performing with Spanish tenor, Plácido Domingo and Welsh Mezzo-soprano, Katherine Jenkins on the previous edition of the Festival, in 2009, Bocelli's guests included the only other surviving member of The Three Tenors, Spanish Catalan tenor, José Carreras, and Italian rock singer, Zucchero. Sculptures by Swiss artist Kurt Laurenz Metzler, who attended the concert, were exhibited during this year's edition. The Teatro del Silenzio has in past incorporated sculptures by artists such as Arnaldo Pomodoro and Igor Mitoraj. Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, who was also in attendance, donated a Bronze statue she had made of Bocelli, to the city of Lajatico, in the afternoon just before the concert. Bocelli was also awarded the Pisano Doc, during the dress rehearsal for the concert, on July 24, "in recognition for a great citizen, who with his extraordinary art and his humanity brings great prestige, honor and respect to the city of Pisa," and received, the 2010 Premio Lunezia nel mondo, during a private ceremony held on July 21, for "the musical-literary quality of his songs."

In September 2010, Bocelli held a concert at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, in Athens, Greece. The concert was attended by George Papandreou, the prime minister of Greece and Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens, among others. All proceeds were donated to help cure cancer. Bocelli also gave concerts in Cairo, Egypt, in front of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza, as well as a fundraising concert inside the famous Duomo di Milano to benefit victims of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.

As part of the 2010 leg of the My Christmas Tour, Bocelli gave two concerts in the two largest indoor arenas of the United Kingdom, The O2 Arena, in London, and The M.E.N Arena, in Manchester, in late November 2010. In early December, Bocelli gave 6 concerts in the United States. He will perform in Madison Square Garden, in New York City, Prudential Center, in Newark, New Jersey, TD Garden, in Boston, Toyota Center, in Houston, Staples Center, in Los Angeles, and the MGM Grand's Garden Arena, in the Las Vegas Strip. The Toyota Center concert, in Houston, was attended by former president George Bush, Sr. and first lady Barbara Bush.

Bocelli also toke part in the Christmas in Washington special on December 12, in the presence of president Barack Obama and the first lady. On December 19, Bocelli gave a concert, conducted by Claudio Scimone, in the Italian Senate. The concert was attended by Italy's top officials including Italy's president Giorgio Napolitano, Renato Schifani, the president of the Italian Senate, Gianfranco Fini, the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Secretary of State of the Holy See.

Voice

With the exception of the negative views of some Classical music critics, Bocelli is widely celebrated as a singer and is admired around the world.

Franco Corelli, one of the greatest Spinto tenors of the twentieth century, praised Bocelli's voice after hearing it for the first time during a Master class in 1986, in Turin, and would later give him private lessons. Another great Italian tenor who championed Bocelli's singing from the very beginning was Luciano Pavarotti. Pavarotti publicly admired Bocelli's voice and played an early part in the younger man's career. Bocelli would later sing during both his wedding ceremony, in 2003, and his funeral, in 2007.

After conducting Bocelli in the Verdi album, in 2000, Zubin Mehta commented that "Andrea's voice is special in many ways. First of all, he has a complete control from forte to pianissimo on any note. The end of 'Celeste Aida,' he attacks the high B flat full voice and then pulls it down to nothing — hardly anybody can do that, it's also very risky on the stage at the opera. But it's not that we tried it 15 times and he got it once; he can do it every time. He can also, in the middle of a phrase, without breathing, change the color of a note, so it's a conductor's dream to ask and to get it because most people can't do that." The interview where Mehta made those comments was featured in a BBC documentary about Bocelli, entitled the "Story Behind the Voice". Mehta also compared Bocelli's voice to the old Italian style of singers, such as Tito Schipa.

The same documentary also featured an interview with Spanish Catalan tenor, José Carreras. He commented that "The first time I had the possibility to listen to Andrea, he was apart of the Sanremo Festival. And I thought wow, that's a nice voice, very beautiful color, very tenor like." He proceeded by saying, "I always thought that he has a wonderful instrument, that he knows very much how to use it."

Similarly, during a 1999 interview on The Charlie Rose show, American soprano Renée Fleming praised Bocelli's voice, by saying "first of all the sound is beautiful. There is something very soulful about the way he sings and it's captured the hearts of something like, the last I've heard eleven million fans." Grammy winning Puerto Rican soprano, Ana María Martínez, who performed with Bocelli on many occasions, also said that "More than anything, Andrea has something that is unique in that he brings this light that is always around him. And this purity of heart and beauty of sound just touches the listener. It can’t be described."

French Canadian singer Celine Dion famously said while introducing him during her Christmas Special for These Are Special Times, in 1998, that "if God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli," Taylor has been a passionate fan of Bocelli's since the beginning of his music career in the mid-90's. Other fans include, Prince Albert of Monaco, Sarah, The Duchess of York, and actress Isabella Rossellini. and Pope John Paul II,

Other world class artists from both the Pop and Opera worlds have also publicly expressed their admiration, including opera singers Plácido Domingo, and Cecilia Bartoli, who collaborated with Bocelli, and conductor Myung-whun Chung, who conducted Bocelli's 1999 allbum, Sacred Arias. Some point to his "poor phrasing, uneven tone and lack of technique."

In 1999, The New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini in his review of Bocelli's North American opera debut at the Detroit Opera House in the title role of Massenet's Werther commented, "The basic color of Mr. Bocelli's voice is warm and pleasant, but he lacks the technique to support and project his sound. His sustained notes wobble. His soft high notes are painfully weak. Inadequate breath control often forces him to clip off notes prematurely at the end of phrases." In December 2000 Tommasini again criticised Bocelli, this time for his La bohème album when he claimed that Bocelli "still has trouble with basic things, like breath support" and his voice had been "carefully recorded", "to help it match the trained voices of the other cast members in fullness and presence."

In describing Bocelli's singing, New York Times music critic Bernard Holland noted, "the tone is rasping, thin and, in general, poorly supported. Even the most modest upward movement thins it even more, signalling what appears to be the onset of strangulation. To his credit, Mr Bocelli sings mostly in tune. But his phrasing tends toward carelessness and rhythmic jumble... The diction is not clear." Similarly, classical music critic Andrew Clement found Bocelli's studio opera recordings consistently disappointing in quality: "Bocelli's profoundly unmusical contribution, with its unvaryingly coarse tone, wayward intonation and never a phrase properly shaped, fatally undermines all their contributions." Anne Midgette of The New York Times agreed, noting "a thinness of voice, oddly anemic phrasing (including shortchanging upper notes of phrases in a most untenorial manner), a curious lack of expression."

During a 2009 performance in New York, the music critic Steve Smith wrote "For cognoscenti of vocal artistry the risks involved in Mr. Bocelli’s undertakings, both then and now, need no explanation. Substantial technical shortcomings masked by amplification are laid bare in a more conventional classical setting. Mr. Bocelli’s tone can be pleasant, and his pitch is generally secure. But his voice is small and not well supported; his phrasing, wayward and oddly inexpressive."

Recognition

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Honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for his contribution to live theater, at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, in 2010.

ECHO music award for "Best Single of the Year", for Time to Say Goodbye, in 1997.

World Music Awards for "World's Best-selling Classical Artist" in 2010.

Personal life

Bocelli met his first wife, Enrica Cenzatti, while singing at piano bars early in his career. Bocelli lives with his girlfriend and manager, Veronica Berti. They met in 2002.

The couple live in a spacious villa, which used to be a hotel, in Forte dei Marmi on the Mediterranean, complete with recording studio. Meanwhile, Bocelli's estranged wife and two sons live in the couple's previous residence in the same comune, in Versilia.

On 30 April 2000, Bocelli's father, Sandro Bocelli, died. His mother encouraged him to honour his commitments, and so he sang for the Pope, in Rome, on May 1, and immediately returned home for the funeral. At his July 5 performance, filmed for PBS as American Dream—Andrea Bocelli's Statue of Liberty Concert, Bocelli dedicated the encore Sogno (Dream), from his 1999 album Sogno, to the memory of his father. Bocelli serves as its honorary president and performs for one night only, every July, the rest of the year, the theatre remains silent.

Since the opening in 2006, Bocelli has held 5 concerts, in every July, with guests ranging from opera singers Plácido Domingo and José Carreras to classical crossover artists Sarah Brightman and Katherine Jenkins, as well as Italian rock and pop stars Zucchero, Laura Pausini, and Elisa. Bocelli's guests have also included instrumentalists Lang Lang, Chris Botti, and Kenny G. The 2007 edition of the "Teatro del Silenzio" was released on DVD in 2008.

Discography

Albums

Studio albums

1994: Il Mare Calmo della Sera

1995: Bocelli

1996/1997: Viaggio Italiano

1997: Aria – the opera album

1999: Sogno

1999: Sacred Arias

2000: Verdi

2001: Cieli di Toscana

2002: Sentimento

2004: Andrea

2006: Amore

2008: Incanto

2009: My Christmas

Compilation albums

1997: Romanza

2007:

Collaborative albums

1997: A Hymn for the World

1998: A Hymn for the World 2 (Voices From Heaven)

2000: Verdi's Requiem

2010:

Complete opera recordings

2000: La Bohème

2003: Tosca

2004: Il Trovatore

2005: Werther

2006: Pagliacci

2007: Cavalleria Rusticana

2008/2010: Carmen

2010: Andrea Chénier

Singles

Duet singles

1995: "Vivo per lei" (with Giorgia)

1996: "Vivo por ella" (with Marta Sánchez)

1996: "Time to Say Goodbye" (with Sarah Brightman)

1997: "Ich lebe für sie" (with Judy Weiss)

1997: "Je vis pour elle" (with Helene Segara)

1999: "The Prayer" (with Celine Dion)

2001: "L'Abitudine" (with Helena Hellwig)

2006: "Somos Novios (It's Impossible)" (with Christina Aguilera)

2006: "Because we believe" (with Marco Borsato)

2006: "Ama credi e vai" (with Gianna Nannini)

2007: "Dare to live" (with Laura Pausini)

2008: "Vive Ya" (with Laura Pausini)

2009: "What Child Is This" (with Mary J. Blige)

2010: "Bridge over Troubled Water" (with Mary J. Blige)

Solo singles

1994: "Il mare calmo della sera"

1995: "Con te partirò"/"Vivere"

1995: "Macchine da guerra"

1995: "Per amore"

1999: "Ave Maria"

1999: "Canto della Terra"

2001: "Melodramma"

2001: "Mille Lune Mille Onde"

2004: "Dell'amore non si sa"

2004: "Un nuovo giorno"

2009: "White Christmas/Bianco Natale"

Live albums & videos

1998: A Night in Tuscany

2000:

2002: Tuscan Skies (Cieli di Toscana)

2006:

2006: Under the Desert Sky

2008: Vivere Live in Tuscany

2008: Incanto The Documentary

2009: My Christmas Special

Bibliography

2000: The Music of Silence: A Memoir (La musica del silenzio) - Autobiography

2010: The Music of Silence: A Memoir - Reworked autobiography

See also

Teatro del Silenzio

Andrea Bocelli discography

List of Popera artists

List of Easy Listening artists

List of Adult Contemporary atists

List of awards and nominations received by Andrea Bocelli

List of best-selling music artists

References

External links

Bocelli's official site

Official German fan site (English version)

Bocelli Community

Official forum

Bocelli on Myspace.com

Bocelli on Facebook.com

Bocelli on Youtube.com

Bocelli on discogs.com

Biography of Andrea Bocelli, from RAI International

Bocelli pages at Music City

Andrea Bocelli on Universal Classics and Jazz Website

Andrea Bocelli section on classicalx.com

C Music TV Profile of Andrea Bocelli

Bocelli lyrics

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Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891–August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (June 11, 1888–August 23, 1927) were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. After a controversial trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian immigrants were executed on August 23, 1927.

There is highly politicized dispute over their guilt or innocence, as well as whether or not the trials were fair. The dispute focuses on small details and contradictory evidence, and historians have not reached a consensus.

Overview

Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the murders of Frederick Parmenter, a paymaster, and Alessandro Berardelli, a security guard, at the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company, on Pearl Street in Braintree, Massachusetts during the afternoon of April 15, 1920. Vanzetti was further charged with the theft of $15,776.73 from the company.

Police suspicions regarding the Braintree robbery-murder and an earlier attempted robbery on December 24, 1919 in Bridgewater, Massachusetts centered on local Italian anarchists. While neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had a criminal record, the authorities knew them as radical militants and adherents of Luigi Galleani. Police connected the crimes and the recent activities of the Galleanist anarchist movement, speculating that the robbers were motivated by the need to finance more bombings.

The two men were arrested in Brockton, Massachusetts on May 5, 1920, after appearing at a garage to pick up a car that police believed was used in the robberies. Both had pistols on them, along with anarchist literature, and Vanzetti was carrying shotgun shells similar to those used in the holdups.

Vanzetti was first tried for the armed robbery in Bridgewater and convicted. Both men were then tried for the Braintree crimes and convicted. After several failed appeals over six years, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. Celestino Madeiros (also spelled Medeiros), who had confessed to the Braintree murders, was executed the same day for a different murder.

Background

Sacco was a shoe-maker born in Torremaggiore, Foggia Province, Puglia Regione, Italy who immigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen. Vanzetti was a fishmonger born in Villafalletto, Cuneo Province, Piemonte Region, Italy who arrived in the United States at age twenty. Both men left Italy for the U.S. in 1908, although they did not meet until a 1917 strike. The men were followers of Luigi Galleani, an Italian anarchist who advocated revolutionary violence, including bombing and assassination. Galleani published Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), a periodical that advocated violent revolution, and an explicit bomb-making manual called La Salute è in voi!. At the time, Italian anarchists ranked at the top of the United States government's list of dangerous enemies. Since 1914, they had been identified as suspects in several violent bombings and assassination attempts, including an attempted mass poisoning. Publication of Cronaca Sovversiva was suppressed in July 1918, and the government deported Galleani and eight of his closest associates on June 24, 1919.

Remaining Galleanists either sought to avoid arrest by becoming inactive or going underground, or remained active. For three years, perhaps 60 Galleanists waged an intermittent campaign of violence against US politicians, judges, and other federal and local officials, especially those who had supported deportation of alien radicals. Among the dozen or more violent acts was the bombing of US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's home on June 2, 1919. In that incident, one Galleanist, Carlo Valdonoci, a former editor of Cronaca Sovversiva and an associate of Sacco and Vanzetti, was killed. The bomb intended for Attorney General Palmer exploded in Valdonoci's hands. Radical pamphlets entitled "Plain Words" signed "The Anarchist Fighters" were found at the scene of this and several other midnight bombings that night. Roberto Elia himself was later deposed in the inquiry, and testified that Salsedo had committed suicide for fear of betraying the others, portraying himself as the 'strong' one who had resisted. According to one anarchist writer, Carlo Tresca, Elia changed his story later, stating that Federal agents had thrown Salsedo out the window. Whatever caused Salsedo's death, the outcome was a disaster for the Bureau, which had lost a potential court witness and source of information.

The Galleanists knew that Salsedo had been held by the Bureau of Investigation and may have talked to authorities. Rumors swirled in the anarchist community that Salsedo had made important disclosures concerning the bomb plot of June 2. The Galleanist plotters realized that they would have to go underground and dispose of any incriminating evidence. After their arrest, Sacco and Vanzetti were found to have correspondence with several Galleanists; one letter warned Sacco to destroy all mail after reading.

Arrests

On April 16, one day after the robbery-murders, the Federal Immigration Service called local police chief Michael E. Stewart to discuss Galleanist anarchist Ferruccio Coacci, whom he had arrested on their behalf two years earlier. Coacci had succeeded in postponing his deportation until April 15, 1920, the day of the Braintree holdup. The FIS asked Stewart to investigate Coacci's excuse that he had failed to report for deportation because his wife had fallen ill. Stewart sent two policemen to Coacci's house on April 16.

They found Coacci's wife in good health. Coacci insisted on being arrested for immediate deportation. As he had an alibi for the robbery, his timecard showed he was at work on April 15, he was deported on April 18. Suspicious, Stewart returned to the Coacci residence on April 20, where he found "Mike Boda" (an alias of Mario Buda, the chief Galleanist bombmaker) renting the house. Buda volunteered that Coacci's wife had left in a hurry. Under questioning, Buda admitted owning a .32 caliber Spanish automatic pistol and possessing a diagram of a Savage automatic, such as the one used in the murders. Buda said he owned a 1914 Oakland automobile, which was being repaired. Police thought two cars had been kept at the now empty Coacci garage, and believed a Buick and smaller car were used during the holdup.

When Stewart discovered that Coacci had worked for both the plants that had been robbed, he returned with the Bridgewater police, but Buda had disappeared, along with his possessions and furniture.

The police had instructed the Johnson garage, where the impounded cars were held, to notify them when the owners came to collect the 1914 Oakland. On May 5, 1920 Buda arrived at the garage with three other men, later identified as Sacco, Vanzetti and Riccardo Orciani. Police were alerted but the men sensed a trap and fled. Buda escaped on a motorcycle with Orciani. He later resurfaced in Italy in 1928. Tracked onto a streetcar, Sacco and Vanzetti were soon arrested. Vanzetti claimed that the revolver he was carrying was for protection. To avoid deportation, the pair denied being allied with anarchists.

A postscript to the arrests occurred in 1926, when a bomb destroyed the house of Samuel Johnson, the brother of the Simon Johnson who had called police the night of Sacco and Vanzetti's arrest.

Following the indictment of Sacco and Vanzetti, anarchists in other countries began violent retaliation. In 1921, a booby trap bomb mailed to the American ambassador in Paris exploded, wounding his valet. Other bombs sent to American embassies were defused.

Trials

First trial

Only Vanzetti was tried for the attempted robbery and attempted murder in Bridgewater, which occurred on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1919. Others arrested supported their alibis with documentation, like Sacco's time-card proving he was at work. In 1927, advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti charged that this case was brought first because evidence against Vanzetti in the Braintree robbery was weak and a conviction for the Bridgewater crimes would help convict him for the Braintree crimes. The prosecution countered that the timing was driven by the schedules of different courts that handled the cases.

On the recommendation of supporters, Vanzetti chose to be represented by John P. Vahey, an experienced defense attorney, rather than accept counsel appointed by the court. Frederick Katzmann, Norfolk and Plymouth County District Attorney, prosecuted the case. The presiding judge was Webster Thayer, who was already assigned to the court before this case was scheduled. A few weeks earlier he had given a speech to new American citizens decrying Bolshevism and anarchism's threat to American institutions. He supported the suppression of radical speech.

The trial began on June 22, 1920. The prosecution presented several witnesses who put Vanzetti at the scene of the attempted robbery. Their descriptions varied, especially with respect to the shape and length of Vanzetti’s mustache. Physical evidence included a shotgun shell retrieved at the scene of the crime and several shells found on Vanzetti when he was arrested.

The defense produced sixteen witnesses—all Italians from Plymouth who testified that at the time of the attempted robbery they had bought eels for the Christmas holiday from him in accordance with their Christmas traditions. Such details reinforced the difference between the Italians and the Yankee jurors. Some testified in imperfect English, others through an interpreter whose failure to speak the same dialect of Italian as the witnesses hampered their effectiveness. On cross examination, the prosecution found it easy to make the witnesses appear confused about dates. A boy who testified admitted rehearsing his testimony. "You learned it just like a piece at school?," the prosecutor asked. "Sure," he replied. The defense tried to rebut the eyewitnesses with testimony that Vanzetti always wore his mustache in a distinctive long style, but the prosecution rebutted their testimony.

Though the defense case went badly, Vanzetti did not testify in his own defense. Vanzetti, in 1927, said his lawyers opposed putting him on the stand. That same year, Vahey told the governor that Vanzetti had refused his advice to testify. A lawyer who assisted Vahey in the defense, decades later, said that the defense attorneys left the choice to Vanzetti but warned that it would be difficult to prevent the prosecution from using cross examination to impeach his character based on his political beliefs and that Vanzetti chose not to testify after consulting with Sacco. Another legal analysis of the case concluded that the defense would have little to lose from Vanzetti's testimony, since his conviction looked certain given how poorly his alibi witnesses had performed under cross. That analysis deemed the defense overall "unconvincing" and "not closely argued or vigorously fought."

On July 1, 1920, the jury deliberated for five hours and returned guilty verdicts on both counts, attempted robbery and attempted murder. Before sentencing, Thayer learned that during deliberations the jury had tampered with the shells found on Vanzetti at the time of his arrest to determine if the shot they contained was of sufficient size to kill a man. Since that prejudiced the jury's verdict on the attempted murder charge, Thayer ignored that conviction. On August 16, 1920, he sentenced Vanzetti for attempted robbery to a term of 12 to 15 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed. An assessment of Thayer’s conduct of the trial, while critical—"his stupid rulings as to the admissibility of conversations are about equally divided"—found little in the record to demonstrate partiality.

The defense raised only minor objections in an appeal that was not accepted. A few years later, Vahey joined Katzmann’s law firm.

Second trial

Sacco and Vanzetti both stood trial in Dedham, Massachusetts for the South Braintree robbery and murders, with Webster Thayer again presiding. He had asked to be assigned the trial. Anticipating a possible bomb attack, authorities had the Dedham courtroom outfitted with cast-iron shutters painted to appear wooden and heavy, sliding steel doors. Each day during the trial, Sacco and Vanzetti were escorted in and out of the courtroom under a heavy armed guard.

Vanzetti testified that he had been selling fish at the time of the Braintree robbery. Sacco testified that he had been in Boston applying for a passport at the Italian consulate. He stated he had lunched in Boston's North end with several friends, each of whom testified on his behalf. Prior to the trial, Sacco's lawyer, Fred Moore, went to great lengths to contact the consulate employee Sacco said he had talked with on the afternoon of the crime. Once contacted in Italy, the clerk said he remembered Sacco because of the unusually large passport photo he presented. The clerk also remembered the date, April 15, 1920, but he refused to return to America to testify citing his ill health. Instead he executed a sworn deposition that was read aloud in court and questioned by the prosecution, which argued Sacco's visit to the consulate could not be established with certainty. The prosecution also established that Sacco's lunch companions were fellow anarchists.

Much of the trial focused on material evidence, notably bullets, guns, and a cap. Prosecution witnesses testified that the .32-caliber bullet that had killed Berardelli was of a brand so obsolete that the only bullets similar to it that anyone could locate to make comparisons were those in Sacco's pockets. Yet ballistics evidence, which was presented in exhaustive detail, was equivocal. Prosecutor Frederick Katzmann, after initially promising he would not try to link any fatal bullet with Sacco's gun, changed his mind after the defense arranged test firings of the gun. Sacco, saying he had nothing to hide, had allowed his gun to be test-fired, with experts for both sides present, during the trial's second week. The prosecution then matched bullets fired through the gun to those taken from one of the slain guards. In court, two prosecution experts swore that one of the fatal bullets, quickly labeled Bullet III, matched one of those test-fired. Two defense experts said the bullet did not match. Years later, defense lawyers would suggest that the fatal bullet had been substituted by the prosecution. Noting that witnesses swore to seeing one gunman pump bullets into Berardelli, they asked how only one of four bullets found in the deceased could have come from Sacco's gun.

Even more doubt surrounded Vanzetti's gun. Since all of the bullets found at the scene were .32 caliber and Vanzetti's gun was .38 caliber, there was no direct evidence tying Vanzetti's gun to the crime scene. The prosecution claimed it had originally belonged to the slain guard and that it had been stolen during the robbery. No one testified to seeing anyone take the gun, but the guard, while carrying $15,776.51 in cash through the street, had no gun on him when found dead. The prosecution traced the gun to a Boston repair shop where the guard had dropped it off a few weeks before the murder. The defense, however, was able to raise doubts, noting that the repair shop had no record of the gun ever being picked up and that the guard's widow had told a friend that he might not have been killed had he claimed his gun. Still, the jury believed this link as well.

The prosecution's final piece of material evidence was a flop-eared cap claimed to have been Sacco's. Sacco tried the cap on in court and, according to two newspaper sketch artists who ran cartoons the next day, it was too small, sitting high on his head. But Katzmann insisted the cap fitted Sacco and continued to refer to it as his. Further controversy clouded the prosecution witnesses who identified Sacco at the scene of the crime. One, a bookkeeper named Mary Splaine, precisely described Sacco as the man she saw firing from the getaway car. Yet cross examination revealed that Splaine had refused to identify Sacco at the inquest and had seen the getaway car for only a second and from nearly a half-block away. While a few others singled out Sacco or Vanzetti as the men they had seen at the scene of the crime, far more witnesses, both prosecution and defense, refused to identify them.

After deliberating for three hours, then breaking for dinner, the jury returned guilty verdicts. Supporters later insisted Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted for their anarchist views, yet every juror insisted anarchism had played no part in their decision. First degree murder in Massachusetts was a capital crime. Sacco and Vanzetti were therefore bound for the electric chair unless the defense could find new evidence.

The verdicts and the likelihood of death sentences immediately roused international opinion. There were demonstrations in 60 Italian cities and a flood of mail to the American embassy in Paris. Demonstrations followed in a number of Latin American cities. Anatole France, veteran of the campaign for Alfred Dreyfus and recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote an "Appeal to the American People": "The death of Sacco and Vanzetti will make martyrs of them and cover you with shame. You are a great people. You ought to be a just people."

Defense Committee

Motions for a new trial

While the prosecution staunchly defended the verdict, the defense, led by attorney Fred Moore, continued to develop evidence that raised doubts. Three key prosecution witnesses stated that they had been coerced into identifying Sacco at the scene of the crime, but when confronted by District Attorney Katzmann they denied any coercion. One of them, Lola Andrews, a nurse, told authorities that she was forced to sign an affidavit stating she had wrongfully identified Sacco and Vanzetti. She signed a counter-affidavit the following day. Another, Lewis Pelser, described how he had submitted to alleged prosecutorial coercion while drunk and signed a counter-affidavit shortly thereafter.

In 1924, controversy continued when it was discovered that someone had switched the barrel of Sacco's gun with that of another Colt automatic used for comparison. Other appeals focused on the jury foreman and a prosecution ballistics expert. In 1923, the defense filed an affidavit from a friend of the jury foreman who swore that prior to the trial, the man had said of Sacco and Vanzetti, "Damn them, they ought to hang them anyway!" That same year, a state police captain retracted his trial testimony linking Sacco's gun to the fatal bullet. Captain William Proctor claimed that he never meant to imply the connection and had repeatedly told Katzmann there was no such connection, but that the prosecution had crafted its trial questioning to disguise his true assessment.

Thayer denied all motions for a new trial on October 1, 1924.

Appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court

The defense appealed Thayer's denial of their motions to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), the highest level of the state's judicial system. Both sides presented arguments to its 5 judges on January 11–13, 1926. The Court did not have the authority to review the trial record as a whole or to judge the fairness of the case. Instead, the judges only considered whether Thayer had abused his discretion in the course of the trial. Thayer later claimed that the SJC had "approved" the verdicts, which advocates for the defendants protested as a misinterpretation of the Court's ruling, which only found "no error" in his individual rulings.

Madeiros confession

In November 1925, Celestino Madeiros, an ex-convict awaiting trial for murder, confessed to committing the Braintree crimes. He absolved Sacco and Vanzetti of participation. In May, once the SJC had denied their appeal and Madeiros was convicted, the defense investigated the details of Madeiros’ story. Police interviews led them to the Morelli gang based in Providence, Rhode Island. They developed an alternative theory of the crime based on the gang’s history of shoe-factory robberies, connections to a car like that used in Braintree, and other details. Gang leader Joe Morelli bore a striking resemblance to Sacco.

The defense filed a motion for a new trial based on the Madeiros confession on May 26, 1926. When Thayer heard arguments on September 13–17, 1926, Judge Thayer denied this motion for a new trial on October 23, 1926. After arguing against the credibility of Madeiros, he addressed the defense claims against the federal government, saying the defense was suffering from "a new type of disease,...a belief in the existence of something which in fact and truth has no such existence."

Three days later, the Boston Herald responded to Thayer's decision by reversing its longstanding position and calling for a new trial. Its editorial, "We Submit", earned its author a Pulitzer Prize. No other newspapers followed suit.

Second appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court

The defense promptly appealed once more to the Supreme Judicial Court and presented their arguments on January 27–28, 1927.

The Supreme Judicial Court denied the Madeiros appeal on April 5, 1927.

Protests and advocacy

Many famous socialists and intellectuals campaigned for a retrial without success. John Dos Passos came to Boston to cover the case as a journalist, stayed to author a pamphlet called Facing the Chair, and was arrested in a demonstration on August 10, 1927, along with Dorothy Parker. After being arrested while picketing the State House, Edna St. Vincent Millay pleaded her case to the governor in person and then wrote an appeal: "I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt...There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight."

Others who wrote to Fuller or signed petitions included Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. The president of the American Federation of Labor cited "the long period of time intervening between the commission of the crime and the final decision of the Court" as well as "the mental and physical anguish which Sacco and Vanzetti must have undergone during the past seven years" in a telegram to the governor.

Benito Mussolini, himself the target of two anarchist assassination attempts, quietly made inquiries through diplomatic channels and was prepared to ask Governor Fuller to commute the sentences if it appeared his request would be granted.

Defendants in prison

For their part, Sacco and Vanzetti seemed to alternate between moods of defiance, vengeance, resignation, and despair. The June 1926 issue of Protesta Umana published by their Defense Committee carried an article signed by Sacco and Vanzetti that appealed for retaliation by their colleagues. In the article, Vanzetti stated "I will try to see Thayer death [sic] before his pronunciation of our sentence" and asked fellow anarchists for "revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead." In a reference to Luigi Galleani's bomb-making manual (covertly titled La Salute è in voi!), the article concluded "Remember, La Salute è in voi!". Both Sacco and Vanzetti wrote dozens of letters expressing their innocence. Sacco and Vanzetti insisted they had been framed because they were anarchists.

Sentencing

On April 9, 1927, Judge Thayer heard final statements from Sacco and Vanzetti. In a lengthy speech Vanzetti said:

:I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth–I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I am an Italian and indeed I am an Italian...if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.

Thayer declared that the responsibility for the conviction rested sole with the jury's determination of guilt. "The Court has absolutely nothing to do with that question." He sentenced each of them to "suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body" during the week beginning July 10.

On May 10, a package bomb addressed to Governor Fuller was intercepted in the Boston post office.

Governor’s Advisory Committee

In response to public protests that greeted the sentencing, Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller faced last minute appeals to grant clemency to Sacco and Vanzetti. On June 1, 1927, he appointed an Advisory Committee of three: President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT, and Probate Judge Robert Grant. They were tasked with reviewing the trial to determine whether it had been fair. Lowell's appointment was generally well received, for though he had controversy in his past he had also at times demonstrated an independent streak. The defense attorneys considered resigning when they determined that the Committee was biased against the defendants, but some of the defendants' most prominent supporters, including Harvard Law Professor Felix Frankfurter and Judge Julian W. Mack of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, persuaded them to stay because Lowell "was not entirely hopeless."

One of the defense attorneys, though ultimately very critical of the Committee's work, thought the Committee members were not really capable of the task the Governor set for them: "No member of the Committee had the essential sophistication that comes with experience in the trial of criminal cases....The high positions in the community held by the members of the Committee obscured the fact that they were not really qualified to perform the difficult task assigned to them." He also thought that the Committee, particularly Lowell, imagined it could use its fresh and more powerful analytical abilities to outperform the efforts of those who had worked on the case for years, even finding evidence of guilt that professional prosecutors had discarded.

Grant was another establishment figure, a probate court judge from 1893 to 1923 and an Overseer of Harvard University from 1896 to 1921, and the author of a dozen popular novels. Some criticized Grant's appointment to the Committee, with one defense lawyer saying he "had a black-tie class concept of life around him," but Harold Laski in a conversation at the time found him "moderate." Others cited evidence of xenophobia in some of his novels, references to "riff-raff" and a variety of racial slurs. His biographer allows that he was "not a good choice," not a legal scholar, and handicapped by age. Stratton, the one member who was not a Boston Brahmin, maintained the lowest public profile of the three and hardly spoke during its hearings.

In their earlier appeals, the defense was limited to the trial record. The Governor's Committee, however, was not a judicial proceeding, so Judge Thayer's comments outside the courtroom could be used to demonstrate his bias. Once Thayer told reporters that "No long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!" According to the sworn affidavits of eyewitnesses, Thayer also lectured members of his clubs, calling Sacco and Vanzetti "Bolsheviki!" and saying he would "get them good and proper". In 1924, Thayer confronted a Massachusetts lawyer at Dartmouth, his alma mater, and said: "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day. I guess that will hold them for a while.... Let them go to the Supreme Court now and see what they can get out of them." The Committee knew that, following the verdict, Boston Globe reporter Frank Sibley, who had covered the trial, wrote a protest to the Massachusetts attorney general condemning Thayer's blatant bias. Thayer's behavior both inside the courtroom and outside of it had become a public issue, with the New York World attacking Thayer as "an agitated little man looking for publicity and utterly impervious to the ethical standards one has the right to expect of a man presiding in a capital case."

After two weeks of hearing witnesses and reviewing evidence, the Committee determined that the trial had been fair and a new trial was not warranted. They assessed the charges against Thayer as well. Their criticism, using words provided by Judge Grant, was direct: "He ought not to have talked about the case off the bench, and doing so was a grave breach of judicial decorum." But they also found some of the charges about his statements unbelievable or exaggerated, and they determined that anything he might have said had no impact on the trial. The panel's reading of the trial transcript convinced them that Thayer "tried to be scrupulously fair." The Committee also reported that the trial jurors were almost unanimous in praising Thayer's conduct of the trial.

A defense attorney later noted ruefully that the release of the Committee's report "abruptly stilled the burgeoning doubts among the leaders of opinion in New England." Supporters of the convicted men denounced the Committee. Harold Laski said the decision represented Lowell's "loyalty to his class."

Execution and funeral

On August 15, 1927, with the executions scheduled for midnight on the 22nd, a bomb exploded at the home of one of the Dedham jurors. On Sunday, the 21st, more than 20,000 protesters assembled on Boston Common.

In their cells at Charlestown State Prison, both Sacco and Vanzetti refused a priest several times on their last day. Their attorney William Thomson asked Vanzetti to make a statement opposing violent retaliation for his death and they discussed forgiving one's enemies. Celestino Madeiros, whose execution had been delayed in case his testimony was required at another trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, was executed first. Sacco was next and went quietly to the electric chair, then shouted "Viva l'anarchia!" and "Farewell, mia madre." Vanzetti, in his final moments, shook hands with guards and thanked them for their kind treatment, read a statement proclaiming his innocence, and finally said, "I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me." All three executions were carried out by Robert G. Elliott, the "state electrician".

Violent demonstrations swept through many cities the next day, including Geneva, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. In South America wildcat strikes closed factories. Three died in Germany, and protesters in Johannesburg burned an American flag outside the American embassy.

At the funeral parlor in Boston's North End, more than 10,000 mourners viewed Sacco and Vanzetti in open caskets over two days. At the funeral parlor, a wreath over the caskets announced Aspettando l'ora di vendetta (Awaiting the hour of vengeance). On Sunday, August 28, a two-hour funeral procession bearing huge floral tributes moved through the city. Police blocked the route, which passed the State House, and at one point mourners and the police clashed. The hearses reached Forest Hills Cemetery where, after a brief eulogy, the bodies were cremated. The Boston Globe called it "one of the most tremendous funerals of modern times." Will H. Hays, head of the motion picture industry's umbrella organization, ordered all film of the funeral procession destroyed.

Sacco's ashes are in Torremaggiore, the town of his birth, at the base of a monument erected in 1998. Vanzetti's ashes were buried with his mother in Villafalletto.

Continuing protests and analyses

A few days after the executions, Sacco's widow thanked Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni by letter for his support and added that the director of the tobacco firm Combinados had offered to produce a cigarette brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti". In December 1928, Di Giovanni and his comrades failed in an attempt to bomb the train in which President Herbert Hoover traveled during his visit to Argentina . Afterward, Thayer lived permanently at his club in Boston, guarded 24 hours a day until his death.

In the fall of 1928, Upton Sinclair published his novel Boston, an indictment of the American judicial system that took the case, especially Vanzetti's life and writings, as its focus, mixing fictional characters with actual participants in the trials. Though his portrait of Vanzetti was entirely sympathetic, he disappointed advocates for the defense by failing to absolve Sacco and Vanzetti of the crimes, however much he argued that their trial had been unjust. Years later, he explained: "Some of the things I told displeased the fanatical believers; but having portrayed the aristocrats as they were, I had to do the same thing for the anarchists."

When the letters Sacco and Vanzetti wrote appeared in print in 1928, journalist Walter Lippmann commented: "If Sacco and Vanzetti were professional bandits, then historians and biographers who attempt to deduce character from personal documents might as well shut up shop. By every test that I know of for judging character, these are the letters of innocent men." On January 3, 1929, as Gov. Fuller left the inauguration of his successor, he found a copy of the Letters thrust at him by someone in the crowd. He knocked it to the ground "with an exclamation of contempt."

Intellectual and literary supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti continued to speak out. In 1936, on the day when Harvard celebrated its 300th anniversary, 28 Harvard alumni issued a statement attacking the University's retired President Lowell for his role on the Governor's Advisory Committee in 1927. They included Heywood Broun, Malcolm Cowley, Granville Hicks, and John Dos Passos.

Massachusetts judicial reform

Following the SJC's assertion that it could not order a new trial even if there was new evidence that "would justify a different verdict," a movement for "drastic reform" quickly took shape in Boston's legal community. Governor Fuller endorsed the proposal in his January 1928 annual message.

The Judicial Council repeated in recommendations in 1937 and 1938. Finally, in 1939 the language it had proposed was adopted and the SJC gained the authority to consider an entire case on the law and on the evidence or "for any other reason that justice may require." (Mass laws, 1939 c 341)

Historical viewpoints

Many historians, especially legal historians, have concluded the Sacco and Vanzetti prosecution, trial, and aftermath constituted a blatant disregard for political civil liberties, especially Thayer's decision to deny a retrial.

Some critics felt that the authorities and jurors were influenced by strong anti-Italian prejudice and prejudice against immigrants widely held at the time, especially in New England. Fred Moore compared the chances of an Italian getting a fair trial in Boston to a black person getting one in the American South. Against charges of racism and racial prejudice, others pointed out that both men were known anarchist members of a militant organization, members of which had been conducting a violent campaign of bombing and attempted assassinations, acts condemned by the Italian-American community and Americans of all backgrounds. Though in general anarchist groups did not finance their militant activities through bank robberies, a fact noted by the investigators of the Bureau of Investigation, this was not true of the Galleanist group, as Mario Buda readily admitted to an interviewer: "Andavamo a prenderli dove c'erano" ("We used to go and get it [money] where it was") — meaning factories and banks.

Others believe that the government was really prosecuting Sacco and Vanzetti for the robbery-murders as a convenient excuse to put a stop to their militant activities as Galleanists, whose bombing campaign at the time posed a lethal threat, both to the government and to many Americans. Faced with a secretive underground group whose members resisted interrogation and believed in their cause, Federal and local officials using conventional law enforcement tactics had been repeatedly stymied in their efforts to identify all members of the group or to collect enough evidence for a prosecution.

Most historians believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were involved at some level in the Galleanist bombing campaign, although their precise roles have not been determined. The Galleanist bombmaker, Mario Buda, reportedly told a friend in 1955, "Sacco c'era" (Sacco was there).

Later evidence and investigations

In 1941, anarchist leader Carlo Tresca, a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee, told Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent". After The Nation and The New Republic refused to publish Eastman's revelation, it was published in an article in the National Review in 1961. Later, others would confirm being told the same information by Tresca.

Labor organizer Anthony Ramuglia, an anarchist in the 1920s, said in 1952 that a Boston anarchist group had asked him to be a false alibi witness for Sacco. After agreeing, he had remembered that he had been in jail on the day in question, so he could not testify.

Both men had previously fled to Mexico, changing their names in order to evade draft registration, a fact the prosecutor in their murder trial used to demonstrate their lack of patriotism and which they were not allowed to rebut. Sacco and Vanzetti's supporters would later argue that the men fled the country to avoid persecution and conscription, their critics, to escape detection and arrest for militant and seditious activities in the United States. But a later Italian history of anarchism reported the reminiscences of one of their political allies who said:

Several dozen Italian anarchists left the United States for Mexico. Some have suggested they did so because of cowardice. Nothing could be more false. The idea to go to Mexico arose in the minds of several comrades who were alarmed by the idea that, remaining in the United States, they would be forcibly restrained from leaving for Europe, where the revolution that had burst out in Russia that February promised to spread all over the continent.

In October 1961, ballistic tests were run with improved technology using Sacco's Colt automatic. The results confirmed that the bullet that killed Berardelli in 1920 was fired from Sacco's pistol. Subsequent investigations in 1983 also supported this finding .

In 1988, Charlie Whipple, a former Boston Globe editorial page editor, revealed a conversation that he had with Sergeant Edward J. Seibolt in 1937. According to Whipple, Seibolt said that the police ballistics experts had switched the murder weapon, but Seibolt indicated that he would deny this if Whipple ever printed it. At the time, Whipple was unfamiliar with the specific facts of the case, and it is not known if Seibolt was actually recalling Albert Hamilton's testimony and behavior on the stand when Hamilton apparently switched Sacco's gun barrel with that of another Colt automatic.

Sacco's .32 Colt pistol is also claimed to have passed in and out of police custody, and to have been dismantled several times, both in 1924 prior to the gun barrel switch, and again between 1927 and 1961, thus interrupting the chain of custody of the evidence. The central problem with these charges is that the match to Sacco's gun was based not only on the .32-caliber Colt pistol, but also on the .32-caliber bullet that killed Berardelli, as well as spent cartridge cases found at the scene. This means that in addition to tampering with the pistol, any conspirator bent on switching or dismantling Sacco's pistol would also be required to access police evidence lockers and exchange the bullet obtained from Berardelli's body as well as all spent casings retrieved by police, or else locate the actual murder weapon, then switch barrel, firing pin, ejector, and extractor, all before Goddard's examination in 1927 when the first match was made to Sacco's gun.

Critics of the prosecution's evidence have repeatedly pointed to a single anomaly — that several witnesses to the crime insisted the gunman, alleged to be Sacco, fired four bullets into Berardelli. "He shot at Berardelli probably four or five times," one witness said. "He stood guard over him." Despite this, only one fatal bullet was ever linked to Sacco's pistol. In 1927, the defense raised the suggestion that the fatal bullet had been planted, calling attention to the awkward scratches on the base of the bullet that differed from those on other bullets. The Lowell Commission dismissed this claim as desperate but in 1985, historians William Kaiser and David Young made a compelling case for a switch in their book Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.

In 1973 a former mobster published a confession by Frank "Butsy" Morelli, Joe's brother. "We whacked them out, we killed those guys in the robbery," Butsy Morelli told Vincent Teresa. "These two greaseballs Sacco and Vanzetti took it on the chin."

Before his death in June 1982, Giovanni Gambera, a member of the four-person team of anarchist leaders that met shortly after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti to plan their defense, told his son that "everyone [in the anarchist inner circle] knew that Sacco was guilty and that Vanzetti was innocent as far as the actual participation in killing."

Russell had originally written about the case, arguing that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, but further research led him to write a 1975 book, asserting that Sacco was, in fact, guilty. Russell used the Gambera revelation as the basis of a new book in 1986, in which he claims that the case is "solved," and presents his view that Sacco was one of the shooters, while Vanzetti was an accessory after the fact. While Russell's 1975 book was praised, even by those who disagreed with his conclusion, for being balanced and well-reasoned, his 1986 book was much more negatively received.

Months before he died, the distinguished jurist Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., who had presided for 45 years on the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, wrote to Russell stating "I myself am persuaded by your writings that Sacco was guilty." The judge's assessment was significant, because he was one of Felix Frankfurter's "Hot Dogs," and Justice Frankfurter had advocated his appointment to the federal bench.

Dukakis proclamation

In 1977, as the 50th anniversary of the executions approached, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis asked the Office of the Governor's Legal Counsel to report on "whether there are substantial grounds for believing–at least in the light of the legal standards of today–that Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly convicted and executed" and to recommend appropriate action. The resulting "Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti" detailed grounds for doubting that the trial was conducted fairly in the first instance and argued as well that such doubts were only reinforced by "later-discovered or later-disclosed evidence." The Report questioned prejudicial cross-examination that the trial judge allowed, the judge's hostility, the fragmentary nature of the evidence, and eyewitness testimony that came to light after the trial. It found the judge's charge to the jury troubling for the way it emphasized the defendants behavior at the time of their arrest and highlighted certain physical evidence that was later called into question. The Report also dismissed the argument that the trial had been subject to judicial review, noting that "the system for reviewing murder cases at the time...failed to provide the safeguards now present."

Based on recommendations of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dukakis declared August 23, 1977, the 50th anniversary of their execution, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day. His proclamation, issued in English and Italian, stated that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." He did not pardon them, because that would imply they were guilty. Neither did he assert their innocence. A resolution to censure the Governor failed in the Massachusetts Senate by a vote of 23 to 12. Dukakis later expressed regret only for not reaching out to the families of the victims of the crime.

Later tributes

A memorial committee attempted to present a plaster cast executed in the 1937 by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, to Massachusetts governors and Boston mayors in 1937, 1947, and 1957 without success. On August 23, 1997, on the 70th anniversary of the Sacco and Vanzetti executions, Boston's first Italian-American Mayor Thomas Menino and the Italian-American Governor of Massachusetts Paul Cellucci unveiled the work at the Boston Public Library, where it remains on display. "The city's acceptance of this piece of artwork is not intended to reopen debate about the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti," Menino said. "It is intended to remind us of the dangers of miscarried justice, and the right we all have to a fair trial." The event occasioned a renewed debate about the fairness of the trial in the editorial pages of the Boston Herald. There is also a mosaic mural of the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti on the main campus of Syracuse University.

The "Sacco and Vanzetti Century" was an American anarchist military unit in the Durruti Column that fought in the Spanish Civil War.

There are many objects in the former USSR named after "Sacco and Vanzetti", for example a beer production facility in Moscow, a kolkhoz in Donetsk region, Ukraine, and an apartment complex in Yekaterinburg. There are also numerous towns in Italy that have streets named after Sacco and Vanzetti, including Via Sacco-Vanzetti in Torremaggiore, Sacco's home town, and Villafalletto, Vanzetti's.

References in creative works

Plays

The scenario of Maxwell Anderson's 1935 play Winterset was inspired by the case.

The plot of James Thurber and Elliot Nugent's 1940 play The Male Animal turns on a college professor's insistence on reading Vanzetti's statement at sentencing to his English composition class. It appeared on film the next year. In 2000, the play Voices on the Wind by Eric Paul Erickson centered around the final hours of the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis recorded an audio clip of his pardon for the production.

The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti is the subject of the eponymous play by Argentine playwright Mauricio Kartún.

Films

Sacco e Vanzetti, a 1971 film by Italian director Giuliano Montaldo covers the case. Sacco and Vanzetti (2006) was a documentary film.

Music

In 1932, composer Ruth Crawford Seeger wrote the song "Sacco, Vanzetti" on commission from the Society of Contemporary Music in Philadelphia.

In 1960, Folkways Records released an LP titled The Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti, which had eleven songs composed and sung by folksinger Woody Guthrie in 1946-1947 and one song sung by folksinger Pete Seeger using words by Nicola Sacco.

In 1963, Pulitzer Prize winning American composer, Roger Reynolds set selections of Bartolomeo Vanzetti's letters to music in the chamber work Portrait of Vanzetti for narrator, mixed ensemble, and electronics. At the time of his murder in 1964, American composer Marc Blitzstein was working on an opera on Sacco and Vanzetti.

In 1971, Joan Baez performed the song "Here's To You" (music by Ennio Morricone, lyrics by Baez) for an Italian film Sacco e Vanzetti.

In 1972, Israeli actress and singer Daliah Lavi published a tri-lingual version of Baez's "Here's to you" in English, French and German.

In 1974, the French version of "The Ballad of Sacco E Vanzetti" appeared on Mireille Mathieu's album "Mireille Mathieu chante Ennio Morricone".

In 1977, folksinger Charlie King wrote a protest song called Two Good Arms that was based on Vanzetti's final speech.

In 1988, the folk group Patrick Street's included the song "Facing the Chair" on their album, No. 2 Patrick Street.

In 2001, Anton Coppola, uncle of Francis Ford Coppola, premiered his opera Sacco and Vanzetti.

In 2001, the ska punk band Against All Authority wrote a song titled Sacco and Vanzetti, which appears on their album Nothing New for Trash Like You.

In 2003, the album Focus, a collaboration of Ennio Morricone and Portuguese Fado singer Dulce Pontes, included a performance of "The Ballad of Sacco e Vanzetti."

Georges Moustaki, a Francophone singer and songwriter, translated Joan Baez's "Here's To You" into French and called it "Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti".

Written works, paintings

by Ben Shahn at Syracuse University]]

In 1927, editorial cartoonist Fred Ellis published a compendium called The case of Sacco and Vanzetti in cartoons from the "Daily Worker".

Upton Sinclair's 1928 book, Boston: A Novel, is a fictional interpretation of the affair. H. G. Wells's 1928 book Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island references the case and the main character's reaction to it. In 1935, Maxwell Anderson's award-winning drama Winterset presented the story of a man who attempts to clear the name of his Italian immigrant father who has been executed for robbery and murder. It became a feature film a year later. In 1936, the third novel in John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, The Big Money, Mary French works on the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee and is arrested protesting their imminent executions. James T. Farrell's 1946 novel Bernard Clare uses the anti-Italian sentiment provoked by coverage of the case and the crowd scene in New York City's Union Square awaiting news of the executions as critical plot elements.

Howard Fast published his novel The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, based on the case, in 1954.

Mark Binelli presented the two as a Laurel-and-Hardy-like comedy team in the 2006 novel Sacco And Vanzetti Must Die! Ben Shahn produced a series of works related to the case. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, for example, consists of 3 panels. One depicts protesters. Another shows Sacco and Vanzetti as large figures dwarfing that of Governor Fuller. A third shows the members of the Governor's Advisory Commission standing over Sacco and Vanzetti in their coffins. It is owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. A similar sixty-by-twelve-foot mural by Shahn executed in marble and enamel is found on the east wall of Huntington Beard Crouse Hall at Syracuse University. The 1979 Kurt Vonegut novel, Jailbird, refers to events in the history of the American labor movement and references Sacco and Vanzetti prominently and sympathetically.

Poetry

In his poem "America", Allen Ginsberg presents a catalog of slogans that includes the line: "Sacco and Vanzetti must not die". Carl Sandburg described the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in his poem "Legal Midnight Hour". Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem after the executions titled "Justice Denied In Massachusetts". William Carlos Williams wrote a poem entitled "Impromptu: The Suckers" in response to the trial.

Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet's poem "Sacco ile Vanzetti" (Sacco and Vanzetti) hails the two as revolutionaries.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Robert D'Attilio, "La Salute è in Voi: the Anarchist Dimension" in Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations - 1979, Conference Proceedings (Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1982)

Herbert B. Ehrmann, The Case That Will Not Die: Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969)

; reprinted in book form as The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysisfor Lawyers and Laymen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1927)

G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948)

John Neville, Twentieth-Century Cause Cèlébre [sic]: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920-1927 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), ISBN 0275977838. Accents are incorrect in the original.

"Proclamation by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," July 19, 1977, in Upton Sinclair, Boston: A Documentary Novel (Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1978), 797-9

"Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti," July 13, 1977, in Upton Sinclair, Boston: A Documentary Novel (Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1978), 757-90

Francis Russell, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case Resolved (NY: Harper & Row, 1986)

Francis Russell, Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case (NY: McGraw Hill, 1962)

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, Marion Denman Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson, eds. (NY: Penguin Books 2007); various editions, first published 1928

Michael M. Tropp, The Sacco and Vanzetti Case: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005), ISBN 0312400888

William Young and David E. Kaiser, Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985)

Bruce Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (NY: Viking Press, 2007), ISBN 0670063533

Further reading

Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, ISBN 0691026041

Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996

Eli Bortman, Sacco & Vanzetti (New England Remembers), Commonwealth Editions, 2005 ISBN 1889833762

Herbert B. Ehrmann, The Case That Will Not Die: Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969

Howard Fast, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, A New England Legend ISBN 0837155843

David Felix, Protest: Sacco-Vanzetti and the Intellectuals, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965

Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, Justice Crucified, The Story of Sacco and Vanzetti, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977

James Grossman, "The Sacco-Vanzetti Case Reconsidered," in Commentary, January 1962

Brian Jackson, The Black Flag: A Look Back at the Strange Case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981

Joseph B. Kadane and David A. Schum, A Probabilistic Analysis of the Sacco and Vanzetti Evidence, Wiley Series in Probability & Mathematical Statistics, 1996

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling denying new trial at Case citation 255 Mass. 369, decided May 12, 1926

Robert H. Montgomery, Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth, New York: Devin-Adair, 1960

Michael Musmanno, ''The Sacco-Vanzetti Case, [Lawrence, KS], 1963.

Michael Musmanno, ''Was Sacco Guilty?, [New York], 1963.

Richard Newby, Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti, 2002, ISBN 0759607923

Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong, Boston: Little, Brown, 1977

Report to the Governor in the matter of Sacco and Vanzetti, Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1977

Francis Russell, Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962

Francis Russell, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case Resolved, New York: Harper & Row, 1986

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, New York: Octagon Books, 1928

Nicola Sacco, The Sacco-Vanzetti Case, New York: Russell & Russell, 1931

Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations - 1979, Conference Proceedings, Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1979, ISBN 0890730679

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: Transcript of the Record of the Trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the Courts of Massachusetts, 6 vols., NY: Henry Holt & Co., 1928-9

Upton Sinclair, Boston: A Documentary Novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, Cambridge: R. Bentley, 1978

James E. Starrs, "Once More Unto the Breech: The Firearms Evidence in the Sacco and Vanzetti Case Revisited," in Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1986, 630–54, 1050–78

Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009

Lorenzo Tibaldo, Sotto un cielo stellato. Vita e morte di Nicola Sacco e Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Turin: Claudiana, 2008

Bruce Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, New York, Viking, 2007

Robert P. Weeks, Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958

William Young and David E. Kaiser, Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985

External links

Sacco e Vanzetti - Il Caso Politico

Saccoevanzetti.org

The Sacco-Vanzetti case at the Kate Sharpley Library

Sacco and Vanzetti Documentary

saccoandvanzetti.org

The New York Times March 5, 1922

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: An Account, "Famous American Trials." - Overview of case by Professor Douglas O. Linder, UMKC School of Law

Carol Vanderveer, "American Writers and the Sacco-Vanzetti Case," 2001

Category:20th-century executions by the United States Category:Anti-communism in the United States Category:Braintree, Massachusetts Category:Dedham, Massachusetts Category:Duos Category:Executed anarchists Category:Italian anarchists Category:Italian immigrants to the United States Category:Italian people executed abroad Category:Trials in the United States Category:People convicted of murder by Massachusetts Category:People executed by electric chair Category:People executed by Massachusetts Category:People executed for murder Category:Political repression in the United States Category:1927 deaths Category:1891 births Category:1888 births