Biografia
Tito Schipa Jr. was born in Lisbon, Portugal, during a tour with his renowned father. He spent his early years in Hollywood, then Paris, and northern Italy. Since 1955, he has lived in Rome, where he studied modern literature, oriental religions, music and theater history, modern dance, singing, and piano. A self-taught musician, he graduated with top honors as a composer from SIAE, the Italian authors' association. He was actively involved in sports such as athletics (junior national level), fencing (student of Agesilao Greco), shooting, horseback riding, underwater fishing, and karate. He began his artistic career as a stage assistant to Giorgio De Lullo, Giancarlo Menotti, Luigi Squarzina, and Lina Wertmuller, specializing in musical theater. His debut was in Rome with "Then an Alley" (Piper Club, May 1967), the world's first pop opera based on Bob Dylan's song-poems. His own pop opera "Orfeo 9" (1970) was the first composed in Italy and the first staged worldwide. He released two albums (1974 and 1982), gaining recognition as a leading songwriter of Italy's "second generation." In 1975, he founded Teatro in Trastevere, a major off-theater in Rome. In 1983, his rock adaptation of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" was produced on Summer Broadway by Joe Papp. His popular seminar on operatic dramaturgy, "Opera Full Immersion," was recently presented at the Oriental University of Naples. He is the official Italian translator of Bob Dylan's and Jim Morrison's lyrics.
