From January 20, at Palazzo del Fulgor, the vinyl records of the soundtracks from Federico Fellini’s films will be on display.

The exhibition features thirty original records – 33 and 45 rpm – from the private collection of historian Davide Bagnaresi, including rare international editions that document the worldwide circulation of Fellini’s cinema: from La Strada to La dolce vita, from 8½ to prints of particular interest such as the American edition of I clowns.

At the heart of the exhibition is the creative dialogue with Nino Rota and, in later years, with Nicola Piovani, alongside the extraordinary graphic quality of the album covers, whose visual solutions reflect the visionary nature of Fellini’s cinema.

Among the materials on display, the exhibition also presents two rare 78 rpm records containing the songs I cinque Baeki’s and La cavalcata dei cinque, both written by Odoardo Spadaro. According to the Cetra catalogues – the record label of the EIAR – the recordings date from after April 1939. The surname Fellini appears in the credits on the record covers and in the catalogues, raising a question that remains unresolved.

There is, in fact, no definitive proof that the “Fellini” mentioned is Federico, who would only begin collaborating with the EIAR in the early months of 1940. However, the melody of I cinque Baeki’s reappears, with partially reworked lyrics, in the famous sequence of the three gravediggers at the Barafonda Theatre in Roma, suggesting a possible creative continuity.

The picture becomes more complex if one considers that this “Fellini” might instead be Riccardo, Federico’s younger brother, who often joined him during the early months of his stay in Rome and who, according to the recollections of some relatives, may have moved there with him and their mother in March 1939. Riccardo, a passionate singer, was at that time aspiring to a career as a tenor.

In a phase when family roles and trajectories were still fluid, the identity of the Fellini involved in the two recordings remains suspended, leaving the mystery open.