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DIES

Italian composer featured in Tarantino films dies

Riz Ortolani, an Italian composer whose music was used by US director Quentin Tarantino in several of his films, died in Rome Thursday aged 87 after a bout of bronchitis, Italian media reported.

Published: 24 January 2014 08:37 CET
Italian composer featured in Tarantino films dies
Riz Ortolani's music featured in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and Kill Bill. Photo: Indeciso42/Wikimedia Commons

Ortolani's tunes – often stagey guitar pieces in the Spaghetti Western mould – featured in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and Kill Bill.

The composer started out aged 20 as an orchestral arranger for Italy's state broadcaster RAI, and made the move into cinema music in the 1960s, which saw him gain entry into the Hollywood studios.

He was twice nominated for Oscars and won a clutch of other prizes, including two Golden Globes for his work.

He is survived by his wife Katyna, a singer, and their two children.

SEE ALSO: Italian conductor Claudio Abbado dies aged 80

Listen to Ortolani's music from Django Unchained:

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DIES

Emma Morano, last known survivor of 19th century, dies

Emma Morano, an Italian woman believed to have been the oldest person alive and the last survivor of the 19th century, died on Saturday at the age of 117, Italian media reported.

Published: 15 April 2017 18:10 CEST
Updated: 15 April 2017 19:12 CEST
Emma Morano, last known survivor of 19th century, dies
Photo: Olivier Morin/AFP

Morano, born on November 29 1899, died at her home in Verbania, northern Italy, the reports said.

“She had an extraordinary life, and we will always remember her strength to help us move forward in life,” the mayor of Verbania was quoted as saying.

According to the US-based Gerontology Research Group (GRG), Morano ceded the crown of the world's oldest human being to Jamaican Violet Brown, who was born on March 10th, 1900.

Morano's death means there is no one living known to have been born before 1900.

Her first love died in World War I, but she married later and left her violent husband just before the Second World War and shortly after the deathin infancy of her only son.

She had clung to her independence, only taking on a full-time carer a couple of years ago, though she had not left her small two-room apartment for 20 years.

She had been bed-bound during her latter years.

In an interview with AFP last year, she put her longevity down to her diet.

“I eat two eggs a day, and that's it. And cookies. But I do not eat much because I have no teeth,” she said in her home at the time, where the Guinness World Records certificate declaring her to be the oldest person alive held pride of place on a marble-topped chest of drawers.

Her dietary regime has intrigued the medical and scientific worlds.

The eldest of eight children, Morano outlived all of her younger siblings.