Romano Mussolini, son of dictator, dies

ROME -- Romano Mussolini, the Italian jazz pianist whose fame as the fifth and youngest child of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was ultimately rivaled by his musical renown, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 79.

His death was announced on the Web site of the small right-wing party Alternativa Sociale, which is led by his daughter Alessandra. He had been hospitalized since Jan. 21 after a series of ailments.

Born in 1927 in Carpena di Forli in northern Italy, Mussolini was the third son of Benito Mussolini and Donna Rachele Guidi, who also had two daughters.

Amid the censorship under Italian fascism, it was Mussolini's older brother Vittorio who introduced him to film and music; he also painted and made movies. In the 1950s and '60s he was in the vanguard of Italian jazz with his group, the Romano Mussolini All Stars, and he played with U.S. greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Chet Baker.

Mussolini gained even greater international fame with his first marriage, to Anna Maria Scicolone, the sister of the actress Sophia Loren. His second marriage was to the actress Carla Maria Puccini. She survives him, along with two daughters from his first marriage, Alessandra and Elisabetta, and a daughter with Puccini, Rachele.

At times the Mussolini surname proved disadvantageous to his career, and early on he would often play under an alias in and around Naples. Despite his own scrupulous avoidance of politics, politicians from Italy's right wing-parties lauded Mussolini and his family in statements they released Friday.

Giovanni Alemanno, the center-right Italian agricultural minister, said, "Romano knew how to make us love him for his humanity, his art, but also for the dignity and coherence with which he defended his family from attacks and demonizations."

Mussolini condemned the anti-Semitic laws of his father's regime, which resulted in the deportation of more than 7,000 Jews, but he recalled his father and his relationship with him in a favorable light. In 2004, he broke a self-imposed silence about his father and his legacy with the publication of his memoir, "Il Duce, My Father," in which he recalled his father as a sensitive and caring man.

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