The David di Donatello-winning composer discusses his CAM Sugar soundtrack for Marco Bellocchio’s new series Portobello, exploring the human and judiciary drama of Italian television personality Enzo Tortora through music.

The release of the CAM Sugar soundtrack to the HBO Max miniseries Portobello, directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Fabrizio Gifuni, Benedetta Pistolini and Chiara Sortino, brings renewed attention to the music of Teho Teardo, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European film scoring. Winner of the David di Donatello for his work on Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (2008) and recipient of the Premio Morricone, Teardo’s career bridges cinema, experimental music and performance. Emerging from the underground of the Tape Network and industrial scene, his path has long moved between avant-garde experimentation and lyrical composition. Among his many projects stand out collaborations with Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and cellist Erik Friedlander on a work inspired by the poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini:  testaments to a musical language that freely crosses disciplines and traditions.

For Portobello, Teardo has crafted one of his most articulated and complex scores to date. Set between 1983 and 1988, the series investigates the controversial judiciary case of Enzo Tortora, the Italian television personality and host of popular show Portobello– an on-screen flea market –who was wrongly sentenced to prison for ties with mafioso organization Camorra. Rather than focusing on the public persona of Tortora, the composer chose to explore the man behind the headlines, translating the psychological dimension of the judiciary story into music shaped by tension, melodic ambiguity and a subtle sense of claustrophobia. In this conversation with CAM Sugar Journal, Teardo reflects on the origins of the score, his creative dialogue with Bellocchio, and the process of building a musical world that forms an “alliance with the story”.

CAM Sugar Journal: Portobello tells a story deeply rooted in Italy’s collective memory. Where did you begin in shaping the musical identity of the series?

Teho Teardo: I remember the case very clearly — I was a child when Portobello was on television. It was something enormous. There are aspects of this story that profoundly affected me. For instance, the almost claustrophobic feeling that, from one moment to the next, nothing you’re allowed to do is permitted any more — you’re constrained, as if the air has been taken away from you. That sense of suffocation was one of the key elements I worked on.

CSJ: Did you work by subtraction to convey that feeling of suffocation, both human and judicial?

TT: Not musically, because this is actually a very layered score. My writing is often more minimal, but this project is quite articulated and complex.

CSJ: It seems you explored Tortora the man rather than the public figure. Is that right?

TT: The first piece I composed was “Tortora per un po’” (Tortora for a While), and that triggered everything. It took shape shortly after I met Marco Bellocchio, in the summer a couple of years ago. When I left his office, I walked back to my studio in the Esquilino district — about six kilometres. As I was walking, a melody came to me. I recorded it on my phone, singing it. While listening back, two harmonic lines occurred to me. By the time I reached the studio, within half an hour, what would become Enzo Tortora’s theme had taken shape.

It isn’t a dark piece — on the contrary, it’s quite melodic. It made me think there might be another level beneath it. It’s as if, inside that music, Tortora could somehow sink underground and end up imprisoned within the very fabric of the piece. The music could pull him down, but at the same time offer him a way back up. I conceived it almost like a lift.

CSJ: How did Bellocchio react?

TT: The funny thing is that when I sent it to Marco, he initially said he didn’t think it worked at all — yet it returns many times throughout the series. I mention this because there isn’t always a clear, predetermined path, as if everything were meticulously programmed. Sometimes things simply happen. It’s essential for an artist to act like an antenna, capable of picking up signals. That’s far more important than inspiration. That piece set off a chain reaction which shaped many of the other compositions.

CSJ: For example?

TT: “Cosa resta di Napoli” (What Remains of Naples) is conceived as an underground Naples — a Naples inside a prison, or any place in the world where your freedom no longer exists. There’s a strong relationship between this piece and “Tortora per un po’”, even in the tracklist: they are the first and the third tracks respectively. It’s no coincidence that the piece between them, “Conseguenze inaspettate” (Unexpected Consequences), is a complete explosion — furious, aggressive, driven by a relentless rhythm. Something that never actually happened with Tortora.

CSJ: So your work was empathetic towards Tortora the man rather than the public persona?

TT: Yes, the human being is far more interesting to me. Tortora is always polite, courteous. In the rare moments when he loses his temper, he still has an innate ability to contain his anxiety. With that explosive track I asked myself: why doesn’t this man ever explode? Doesn’t he ever feel like lashing out at everything and everyone? Any viewer might wonder the same. Yet it never happened — he was always restrained. So the energy Tortora kept inside himself, I allowed it to detonate in other characters. For instance, in the mythomaniac who opens the third episode — one of the men responsible for condemning him.

CSJ: How much of this introspection stems from your own impressions, and how much from the script or the footage?

TT: I always write a great deal of music while reading the script. The risk of composing directly to the images is ending up with mere commentary. For me, music forms an alliance with the story, with the film. They are two worlds travelling together in order to say something — sometimes through contrast, sometimes through subtraction, sometimes even through deliberate misdirection. But for that alliance to exist, the score cannot be subordinate. It can’t simply be commentary — or worse, mere background sound design.

CSJ: Did your dialogue with Bellocchio shape the identity of the music?

TT: When you work on a score, there’s a strong triangulation between the director, the editor — Francesca Calvelli — and the composer. If it were a rock band, it would be a power trio. From one episode to the next, what you thought made sense might suddenly lose meaning, and you discover something else. It’s an adventurous journey undertaken together.

CSJ: The series features an intriguing contrast between folkloric repertoire — tarantellas, military marches — and the tragic solitude of imprisoned men, not only Tortora but also the Camorra figures. How did you balance the highly popular, maximalist world of television with the prison dimension?

TT: For Portobello, I also suggested some of the repertoire music and even played some of the tarantellas myself. There’s a great deal of Neapolitan popular music used — lively, even cheerful pieces which, within this narrative context, take on a sinister light. There’s a pervasive sense of danger and unease throughout the series. One way of addressing that unease was through melody and harmony. The music I wrote has many melodic elements. I enjoyed using instruments from the Neapolitan tradition, such as the mandolin.

CSJ: Was that also a cultural choice, given the Camorra’s involvement in the story?

TT: Not at all. It wasn’t directly tied to the narrative itself. In my compositions I didn’t play anything that resembles traditional Neapolitan music. Rather, I borrowed elements from that tradition and displaced them, to create a sense of estrangement within a melodic and harmonic framework.

The mandolin’s voice is reassuring, inherently positive. By decontextualising it and placing it elsewhere, I created greater depth. I thought it would be interesting to extract precise elements from that tradition and detach them — just as Tortora was detached from his life and thrust into a world that did not belong to him, a frightening one.

CSJ: Among the repertoire pieces there’s also the “Passerella from 8½” by Nino Rota, from the CAM Sugar catalogue.

TT: The piece appears in a band scene, so we felt it would be more interesting to use Rota’s original composition rather than have the band perform something else.

CSJ: Speaking of Bellocchio and CAM Sugar, he worked extensively with Morricone. You were once due to collaborate with the Maestro. How did that unfold?

TT: In 2009 I won the Morricone Award, presented to me by him personally. Backstage he asked, “Can you write a fugue?” I replied, “Maestro, I come from punk rock — you’ve no idea how many fugues I’ve made!” He looked at me rather curiously; punk rock intrigued him. I found it fascinating that a man of his age and experience was still asking questions about music — and I was asking him just as many. That curiosity is fundamental.

I had recovered two synthesisers from the RAI Studio di Fonologia and suggested we make a record using only those instruments. He looked at me as if I were mad. “No, no, I don’t want to go back there — let’s do something with orchestra.” Morricone had this extraordinary ability to start from extremely minimal themes and expand them magnificently. I thought working with two monophonic synthesisers would be interesting — but he declined, despite my attempts to persuade him.

CSJ: How did your collaboration with Bellocchio begin?

TT: I was invited to perform at Pordenone Docs Fest, where Marco was giving a talk. That evening he came to my concert. I was struck when he later asked to hear the recording of that live performance again — two pieces from that concert ended up in Portobello. A musician doesn’t exist only to compose behind a computer screen, but also to perform live. It’s significant that Marco called me because he appreciated what I do on stage.

CSJ: In today’s landscape, where series are consumed almost voraciously, do you worry that a score might struggle to assert itself beyond the series? Can this music live independently from the images?

TT: There’s very little you can control about how your work is perceived. All you can do is your best. Some tracks went through thirty different versions because I kept searching. I have no jurisdiction over how audiences respond, and frankly it’s not my primary concern. I can’t worry about how people will listen. My job is something else entirely.

CSJ: That sounds rather punk…

TT: Yes. Quite literally. I don’t give a fuck.

CSJ: You’re from Pordenone, home of The Great Complotto. Has that experience — along with your background in the industrial scene and the tape network — continued to influence your writing?

TT: I was too young during The Great Complotto. Over the years I’ve met some of its protagonists, but my musical trajectory went elsewhere, so for me it was more a geographical coincidence. That said, parts of us continue to exist and transform. Perhaps the tape network experience is like a gene that predisposes you to constant mutation and adaptation.

CSJ: In the music industry, how important is adaptation for survival?

TT: Adaptation is crucial if you want to survive a series — a project that can last eighteen months. If you want to reach the end alive, adaptation doesn’t mean kneeling down; it means understanding where you can insert yourself into the narrative and propose ideas to the director and editor. It means finding a way to be useful.

CSJ: Although the series is set in a specific historical period, it seems you didn’t allow yourself to be constrained by the era’s musical references.

TT: I lived through the 1980s — I don’t feel nostalgic about them. They were formative for me, especially musically. One thing was very clear in that decade, and it remains fundamental today: anyone who committed to music sought their own voice. Before artists like Cocteau Twins, Einstürzende Neubauten or My Bloody Valentine, their music simply didn’t exist — because they invented it. That awareness — the search for one’s own voice — was decisive. You may never fully find it, but it’s essential to keep looking.

CSJ: Easier said than done. The past constantly layers itself into our inspirations and can hold us back.

TT: There’s a line in Orwell’s 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future.” I think we’re weighed down by too much nostalgia, which prevents us from looking ahead. For me, music is one of the ways we understand where we are now — and imagine where we might go. It’s no coincidence that I’ve been working for fifteen years with Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten. That shared intent has carried us across decades, always searching.

CSJ: Does the series transcend the historical narrative and add something more?

TT: Absolutely. In the work I did with Bellocchio and Francesca Calvelli, Marco constantly asked what the meaning of a musical gesture was, what the meaning of a scene was. That’s crucial, because it leads back to the fundamental question: why are we here? What are we doing? We tried to answer that. As far as my department is concerned, the music in this series responds first and foremost to that existential question. And to keep asking it at over eighty years of age, as Marco does, is a life lesson.

The CAM Sugar soundtrack to Portobello, produced in collaboration with Our Films, distributed by CAM Sugar and composed by Teho Teardo, is available from 6 March on all digital platforms. Portobello, directed by Marco Bellocchio, is available exclusively on HBO Max.

Opening image: Portobello, directed by Marco Bellocchio, ep.1. Photography by Anna Camerlingo.