July 06, 2020
Oscar-winning Italian composer Ennio Morricone whose haunting scores to Spaghetti Westerns like “A Fistful of Dollars” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” helped define a cinematic era, died on Monday. He was 91.
Morricone broke his femur 10 days ago and died at dawn in a clinic in Rome, his lawyer Giorgio Assumma told Reuters.
Outside the clinic, Assumma handed reporters a death notice written by the composer himself, beginning “I, Ennio Morricone, am dead.”
In a moving one-page text, Morricone thanked his close friends and family for their companionship, naming his children and grandchildren and saying, “I hope they understand how much I loved them.”
He dedicated “the most painful goodbye” to his wife Maria Travia, whom he married in 1956, saying “to her I renew the extraordinary love that bound us together and that I am sorry to abandon.”
He said he wanted a private funeral because “I don’t want to disturb.”--Reuters