Edda Dell'Orso

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Edda Dell'Orso is the stage name of Edda Sabatini, an Italian singer born in 1935. She is known for her collaboration with the composer Ennio Morricone, for whom she sang wordlessly in many film scores. She is a soprano with a range of three octaves. She also worked for other Italian film composers, such as Alex Puddu, with whom she made albums in later years, including Registrazioni al Buio from 2013 and In the Eye of the Cat from 2016.

Music and breakthrough

In Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns her voice was used as an instrument for the first time, with a new and dramatic effect. You can hear her in A Fistful of Dollars, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, above all in the piece The Ecstasy of Gold, and in Once Upon a Time in the West. Her voice sounds there without words, as a high, floating line above the orchestra. In the 1980s she also sang in the Italo disco group Bianca Neve, with Anne Dattner as the face of the group.

Influence

Dell'Orso's most important contribution is that she showed how a voice without words can carry a film scene. Her sound became a fixed part of the sound of the Western and of the Italian soundtracks of the 1960s. Many later film composers and artists from other styles still draw on that style of singing.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1975Granada
• 2016In the Eye of the Cat (soundtrack)

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• The Dream Factory: Film Reel 3^NL Reader