Best Italian musical movies

The story of a virtuoso piano player who lives his entire life aboard an ocean liner. Born and raised on the ship, 1900 learned about the outside world through interactions with passengers, never setting foot on land, even for the love of his life. Years later, the ship may be destroyed, and a former band member fears that 1900 may still be aboard, willing to go down with the ship.

In the 16th century, poet, playwright and part-time actor Miguel de Cervantes has been arrested, together with his manservant, by the Spanish Inquisition. They're accused of presenting an entertainment offensive to the Inquisition. Inside the huge dungeon into which they have been cast, the other inmates gang up on Cervantes and his manservant, staging a mock trial, with the intention of stealing or burning his possessions. Cervantes wishes to desperately save a manuscript he carries with him and stages, with costumes, makeup, and the participation of the other prisoners, an unusual defense—the story of Don Quixote.

A music group and a journalist cross the region of Basilicata by foot to attend a music festival.

In late 18th century Venice, in a convent school for girls, Teresa, a student with prophetic gifts, joins forces with some amazing music-makers. They create a new kind of pop, bright and bold, and challenge the ancient and rigid system.

The enchanted story of Pinocchio.

An orchestra assembles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisitive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.

A feisty 18-year-old Italian-American New Yorker named Cindy is sent off to Rome with her irascible stepmother and vain stepsisters. On the way, she meets and falls in love with, globetrotting bagpacker Mizio, who eventually turns out to be of Italian nobility. There's a fairy stand-in in the form of a spaced-out astrologer, a dance, and she even loses a shoe at one point. Care to venture a guess how it all turns out?

The lives of two local professional dancers change suddenly as American soldiers stop in their town hoping to be entertained in accordance with the Broadway style. Effectively, they perform up to their expectations. However, as the army men have to march northward, their moment of glory finishes heartlessly.

Notre Dame de Paris tells the story of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell-ringer of the cathedral of Notre-Dame and of his impossible and tragic love for Esmeralda, a beautiful gypsy. A love condemned by injustice and hypocrisy. Quasimodo forced by his ugliness to look at the world from the top of a tower one day he falls madly in love with Esmeralda who sees dancing and singing on the square in front of the cathedral. But Esmeralda is in love with Febo, the handsome captain of the King's guards. Febo is fiancé of Fiordaliso, a young and rich bourgeois, but the exotic and sensual beauty of the gypsy does not leave indifferent the man who immediately falls in love with her. Even Frollo, the archdeacon of the cathedral, is attracted by the gypsy and spying on the moves of the two lovers in a raptus of jealousy and repressed carnal desire to get rid of the rival stabbing Febo behind.

After having a fight with his girl friend, Marc follows her to Rome to try and win her back. On the train he meets a girl who is on her way to stay with her uncle. He gives her a lift to her uncle's, but they discover he has gone to South America. So as she has nowhere else to go, she stays with Marc and his cousin, which inevitably leads to romance.

Christine Goerke has wowed audiences as Turandot, the icy princess at the heart of Puccini’s grand final masterpiece. In this performance from the 2019–20 Live in HD season, Goerke stars alongside tenor Yusif Eyvazov (as Calàf) and soprano Eleonora Buratto (as Liù) in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic staging, which dazzles with its opulent visions of mythic China. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium, drawing a vivid array of musical colors from the incomparable Met Orchestra and Chorus.

Father Silvestro receives a phone call from God telling him He intends to send the second flood to earth. The priest then decides to seek help from his compatriots to build a new Noah’s Ark. But to achieve their objectives they must overcome the obstacles that mayor Crispino puts in their way.

Joan of Arc is being burned alive for heresy. In a kind of dream state, she departs from her body and begins to look back upon her life. She begins this journey in a depressed and demoralized state. However, a priest appears to help guide her. First, he shows her those that accused her in the guise of animal characters, in order to show her their true nature. Then, he shows her the good that she has performed for people. In the end, she is proud of what she has done and is ready to face the flames.

Little Rita has a dream: she dreams of a better world and she believes that all the evil in the world originates from gold. So she has decided to blow up all the gold she can put her hands on. In her mission she is assisted by the Indian Chief Bisonte Seduto and by her friend Francis. Little Rita kills Ringo and Django, but she is taken prisoner by the Mexican bandit Sancho who wants to steal her gold. Black Star rescues her and seems determined to help her, but does he?

Marvin Gaye: Live in Montreux 1980 is a taped performance of singer Marvin Gaye's performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded on July 17, 1980. Gaye included this performance as part of a European tour. Gaye performs a majority of his hits from his recent disco-funk hits "Got to Give It Up" and "A Funky Space Reincarnation", to his duet hits with Tammi Terrell including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", in which Gaye re-interpolated the songs as a somber tribute to Terrell, who died over a decade before, to sixties Motown classics such as "I'll Be Doggone", "Ain't That Peculiar", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" and "I Heard It through the Grapevine", to seventies standards such as "What's Going On", "Trouble Man" and "Let's Get It On". The Montreux set was later released as a CD/DVD in 2003.

Gigliola is a young and humble Neapolitan swimmer who will compete in a competition in Spain and finds herself falling for the fiance of her best friend. But when they come to visit her in Italy, she pretends to be rich, with the complicity of their parents.

Gurwinder comes from Punjab, he’s been working for years as a farm hand in Agro Pontino, not far from Rome. Since he first came in Italy, he’s been living with the rest of the Sikh community in Latina province. Hardeep is also Indian, but her stress is Roman, and she works as a cultural mediator. She, born and raised in Italy, is trying to free herself from the memories of a family that emigrated in another age, while he is forced, against his faith, to take methamphetamine and doping to bear the heavy work pace, to be able to send money in India.

The master Impallato takes care of the boys in a suburban after-school. Here he discovers a pupil with an extraordinary baritone voice.

When old-school monsters Frank, Drac and Wolf are deemed "fun" by a court of elders, they're ordered to scare a suburban family or risk a sentence of party entertainers for eternity.

In a world ravaged by violence, and other serious social problems, Joan - a character that alludes to Christ (which represents the return to Earth) arrives to Italy by train and preaching for the salvation of mankind, condemning the hypocrisy and hedonism.

The high spirited daughter of the village lord and her mother have been living in the forest for seven years near her wise grandmother. They wait for her father to come home, meanwhile, her literally heartless uncle rules. He sells his soul for the aid of an enchanted wolf who turns himself human in order to spy. As the tyranical lord begins to see his niece as a threat, he sends the wolf to deal with her.

This Italian film version of Verdi's opera stars Sophia Loren on the screen, with Renata Tebaldi providing the vocals.

A traveling "corps de ballet" is stranded in a small Western town, where the town is being terrorized by an outlaw named El Diablo. In order to hold the town at bay, he is holding several citizens as hostages. In an exciting turn of events, a medical student and Lola Colt, one of the dancers, rebel against El Diablo in an attempt to rescue the hostages.

A sudden gunshot shatters the dream of two lovers on their wedding day. The fate of Orpheus and Eurydice is cruel: on the very day they sought to seal their love, EurydiceΆs soul embarks on its journey to the underworld. Heartbroken, Orpheus embarks on a perilous journey to bring his beloved back from Hades. A journey that will lead the fearless hero to confront the depths of his emotions and face his greatest fears. This journey will take him through strange worlds and into encounters with some of the greatest musical pieces and arias in the history of music. Will love triumph over death?

Tony is in love with Carla, a young student of architecture, but his parents want him to marry Erminia, a rich but ugly girl.

Martha Eggerth heads the cast of Casta Diva, but the central character is famed Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, here played by American actor Phillips Holmes. Paying but scant attention the facts, the film concentrates on Bellini's colorful love life. Evidently the film went through several rewriting processes, as witness the curious performances of Donald Calthrop and Arthur Margetson, whose characters do complete about-faces halfway through the story. Amidst so many British accents, Martha Eggerth's Polish intonations seem out of place, but she photographs beautifully and sings quite well. Casta Diva was attractively filmed on location in Naples. Not to be confused with the 1954 remake (by Gallone himself) or to the English language version "The Divine Spark" (also directed by Gallone and starred by Eggerth).

The love story of Eva, a young immigrant who has always dreamed of becoming a singer but works as a dishwasher, and Armie, a very skilled pianist with a fervent imagination. Both will discover that fantasy, dream and life can instead mix and become the recipe for happiness. The background is New York after the Great War and before the Great Depression, in an era of music, hopes and great changes.

Antonio Moruzzo is the son of a butcher with a passion for music and beautiful girls. The father wants him to study but he would rather run around the countryside and sing his songs.

The upright prof. Filippo Bottini Said Pippo is an "old-fashioned" teacher in a Roman school. He would like a Heart book-style school but clashes with the harsh reality of modern teaching and in particular with the turmoil of the seventies: strikes, occupations, armed students, feminist colleagues. Overwhelmed by events, he will find himself more and more in the maelstrom of the post-1968 protest until he becomes a drug courier. He will be arrested and incarcerated, but thanks to the release on bail provided by his colleague Lalla, with whom he had in the meantime started a relationship, he will be able to redeem himself.

Adolfo Cocchi has a building firm but his plan to build a set of buildings is been stopped by an old former Garibaldian, Don Leopoldo, who refuses to sell his property. A group of young people go to his house to play and sing. Marcella, Cocchi's daughter, who has a beautiful voice, goes to visit Leopoldo and falls in love with Paolo. They have an idea: open a night-club called "Io bacio... tu baci"...

Ignazio Panizza goes from one failure to the other until he meets a singer, Caterina, provided with an exceptional voice.

After serving a conviction for fraud Mario tries to continue with his life and promises Marisa to marry her...

Mario Ferrara Villalta, a nobleman, does not realize that Nino Esposito is secretly a confidant of Don Alfredo Spinosa, a boss of the Camorra , and Roberto's father, his classmate, and appointed him as secretary, unaware of reports of the young with the underworld. Being a close friend of Roberto, Nino agrees to accompany him to a party held in the luxurious villa owned by a girl named Claudia Vieri, daughter of an industrialist friend of Roberto's father.

In Ferrari, Italy two young pizza chefs named Mario and Luigi traverse all around the town looking for a lost violin.

Bored with her bourgeois life, the young Maria Variani, daughter of a professor, meets Bruno, who is part of an amateur jazz group, and allows herself to be persuaded to join the band that plays during the radio program "The microphone is yours".

In 1943, during the war, Francesca, widowed, moves with her three daughters to her country house, to get away from the bombing of Bologna. In the villa she finds her childhood friends and her old love Guido, who has not forgotten her. Francesca has a passion for everything that comes from America, like music and cinema. She even tells her daughters that her husband who died in the war would actually leave for the USA, where he would live.

In Rome's notorious gay club, the Alibi, men date, love and quarrel. Meanwhile, on stage, the classic drama of Salomé is played but with surprising variations, In the end, a clown goes out through the city's streets saying a monologue that explains it all, while satirizing the bourgeoisie.

Rock musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

A hotel owner, in competition with a rival owner, finds a cache of lost treasure on the bottom of the bay after trying to drown himself which turns his life upside down.

Disco Jesus comes back to Earth and takes on the Mafia.

Tony a young unrecognized pop singer spends most of his free time wooing all the beautiful girls he comes across. By resorting to all sorts of expedients, he manages to navigate between six semi-official girlfriends.