Dario Marianelli is one of the rising new stars of film composing. The dramatic score Marianelli has composed for V For Vendetta, the blockbuster follow-up to phenomenally successful trilogy of Matrix films (from the same director/producer team of the Wachowski Brothers and Joel Silver), is certain to bring even more attention to this Oscar nominated composer.

Born in Pisa, Marianelli has studied piano and composition ion Florence and London. After a year as postgraduate composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he was also the chairman of the Contemporary Music Society, he received a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation for a course held by Judith Weir and Lloyd Newson at Bretton University College, on the subject of Composition and Choreography. Other scholarships allowed him to go to Germany for a series of workshops on European Film Music, and to spend three years at the National Film and Television School, from which he graduated in 1997.

Over the last few years Dario has written music for several feature films, TV dramas, documentaries, animations, theatre, contemporary dance and concerts. He has written orchestral pieces for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and for the Britten-Pears Orchestra, vocal music for the BBC Singers, and incidental music for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Dario is currently an Oscar nominee for his score for Pride & Prejudice.

Marianelli’s riveting score is the emotional bedrock for V For Vendetta, a futuristic thriller starring Natalie Portman (Star Wars Episode I, Closer) as Evey who falls under the spell of, a charismatic masked vigilante known only as "V” played by Hugo Weaving (veteran of all three Matrix and Lord Of The Rings) films. It is a race against time as police detective Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) tries to stop V before he follows through with his threat to bomb Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Based upon characters appearing in the best selling graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V For Vendetta deals with the timely subjects of terrorism, government corruption and loss of rights, V For Vendetta is certain to become one of the most watched and talked about films of the year.

V For Vendetta takes place in the year 2020 where the ominous atmosphere of government oppression has forced a handful of citizens to risk death by protectively hiding many banned cultural artifacts. “V” is one such individual, and among his treasures is a jukebox. Three of these banned musical treasures (Julie London’s breathy classic “Cry Me A River,” “Bird Gerhl” from the critically acclaimed Antony And The Johnsons and Cat Power’s slinky cover of the Lou Reed song “I Found A Reason”) are also featured on the soundtrack CD.

“What struck me most of ‘Vendetta’ when I read the sto ry first” says Marianelli, “was how multi-layered its structure was, and how many sides there were to it. It is a political story, but also a love story, a classic revenge story, and a detective story. And above all it is a story about power: the pernicious power of dictatorship, but also the power of ideas, and that of the individual, of the aspiration to be free, of the power to change, and move others to change. There are only a small number of themes going through the score, as I tried binding together all these different perspectives into one musical journey. As all the elements of the story converge, the musical themes also merge with each other, in a build up of pressure.”

“’V’ cannot change what he has become, but he can help Evey to do so. The journey that starts in darkness is already reminiscent of Tchaikowski's 1812 Overture, and accompanies ‘V’ and Evey through their trajectory, as they both come to realize what they really are, as their evolution turns into their revolution. My heartfelt thanks to Pyotr Ilych, for providing the final, unavoidable climax.”