Carmine Gallone

Carmine Gallone (1886-1973), Italian film director, active for nearly 50 years and noted for his films of musicals and operas. Gallone was born in Taggia. After some years writing poems and stage plays, he began writing and directing films in 1913, building elaborate melodramas and epics around his wife, Soava Gallone, and other starring players in Italy, Germany, Austria, and France. His popular successes included La Figlia del Tempesta (1920; The Daughter of the Storm) and Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompeii (1926; The Last Days of Pompeii). With the advent of sound, he specialized in musicals, such as Die Singende Stadt (1930; The City of Song) and Le Chant du Marin (1932; Sailor's Song), and opera adaptations starring the tenor Beniamino Gigli. He also put his talent for spectacle to use in Scipione l'Africano (1937; Scipio Africanus), an epic of ancient Rome financed by the Fascist government during its invasion of Ethiopia (Abyssinia).

After World War II, Gallone made more films adapted from operas, including Rigoletto (1947), Cavalliera Rusticana (1953), and Madama Butterfly (1955), as well as historical epics, such as Cartagine in Fiamme (1959; Carthage in Flames). He retired from film-making in 1962 and died in Frascati on March 12, 1973.