Le Lit conjugal
L’Ape Regina

Teo Usuelli (1920-2003) studied music at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. During the Second World War, he fought with the Italian partisans, then he settled in Rome, where he began his career as a composer for cinema. The Conjugal Bed in 1963 started his fruitful collaboration with iconoclastic director Marco Ferreri. It is one of his too rare soundtracks to have been released on record at the time.

The recurrent main them of The Conjugal Bed reflects the overall satirical tone of the story and the vitality of the young married woman played by Marina Vlady, who won Le Grand prix for her performance at the Cannes Festival.

Usuelli would work on seven other films of Ferreri : The Ape Woman, Controsesso, Today, Tomorrow and the Day After, The Main with the Balloons­, Dillinger Is Dead, The Seed of Man and L’Udienza (The Hearing). His scores for other directors, while remaining excellent, relate to productions which felt into oblivion, such as the documentary Mondo Nudo whose complete soundtrack album is available digitally.