«…come l’angelo custode: una grande invenzione»: Nino Rota e Suso Cecchi, prime collaborazioni e rete familiare.

The friendship between the composer Nino Rota and the members of the Cecchi and d’Amico families characterized the early years spent in Rome by Rota between 1927 and 1950. Out of 158 films set to music by Rota, at least 20 were signed as set designer by Suso Cecchi, wife of Fedele d’Amico and daughter of Emilio Cecchi. In addition to numerous diaries and correspondances, an unpublished nu-cleus of letters and postcards sent by Rota to Cecchi and his wife Leonetta Pieraccini, kept in the Viesseux Archive in Firernze, allows us to reconstruct the composer’s relations with a high-level intel-lectual milieu in the postwar period. Nino and Suso never had direct opportunities for collaboration on the set of films signed in common, but the subject of the radio opera I due timidi of 1950 seems in-stead to echo the personal story of the birth of friendship between the two young people, when Rota resided. in the guest-house on the same floor as the house where Suso received his first piano lessons.