Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

Having received rigorous classical instruction, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino spent his initial years performing in concert halls and opera houses while also serving as an instructor before redirecting his efforts toward film scoring in the early 1950s. The resulting body of work encompassed an unexpected array of prominent international productions, among them Orson Welles’s Othello and Chimes At Midnight, Eugene Lourie’s Gorgo, and Henry Hathaway’s Legend Of The Lost, which starred John Wayne. These assignments established him as one of the most prominent Italian film composers active at the time, although Sergio Leone had originally intended to engage him for A Fistful of Dollars until the distributor required the participation of a younger and less established talent, Ennio Morricone.