The Talented Mr. Ripley

Gabriel Yared is a Lebanese composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his work in France included... the scores for Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later began working on English language films, particularly those directed by Anthony Minghella. He won an Oscar and a Grammy Award for his work on The English Patient and was also nominated for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain . At the age of 7, his father sent Yared to an accordion teacher. Two years later he stopped his accordion lessons and started music theory and piano lessons. His piano teacher thought that he had no future in music. Although he was not a natural pianist, he was interested in reading music. At the age of 14, his piano teacher died, so he was to replace him as the organist of Université Saint-Joseph. He used the university's library to read all the work of Bach, Schumann, and many others. This extensive reading inspired his first original composition, a piano waltz. Yared gained a degree in Law.
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Italy /ˈɪtəli/ , officially the Italian Republic , is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily,... Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, whilst Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world. Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries the political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others.
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