Pasquale La Rotella was born on February 26, 1880 in Bitonto, by Vito, scribe, and by Bibiana Ambrosi, both exponents of wealthy Bitontine families. At the age of four, the little Pasquale played tunes by ear on a rudimentary tin reed and at 6 he joined the young band of Bitonto, put together by Maestro Nicola Bellezza who gave him the part of the piccolo.

At the age of only 8, already fatherless, his mother took him to Naples, where the little Pasquale entered as a boarder in the Conservatory "San Pietro a Majella" to study flute in the class of Italo Piazza. At the age of 13 he obtained a diploma in flute, but continued to attend the Conservatory to study organ with Enrico M. Bossi, piano with Vincenzo Romaniello, and composition with Nicola d'Arienzo until 1896, when he brilliantly passed all the final exams.

In the meantime he was hired by a Neapolitan impresario to direct the opera season of the Teatro Umberto right in his Bitonto, where he was able to make lasting friendship with notable citizens, among whom the cavalier Deo Pannone (1858-1909), rich owner of the place, who took his fate and that of his family to heart, becoming for him a sort of patron.

In 1897, instead of following his impresario in India, he decided to transfer to Milan to broaden his cultural horizons, encourage favorable meetings and devote himself to composition. The inspiration for his first opera, Ivan, was born in Milan; it was inspired by a novel of appendix read in the newspaper Il Secolo and set in revolutionary Russia in 1850. The Bitontine friend Vincenzo Fione, brother of Pannone, made a scenic adaptation for a work in three acts and the libretto was provided by Armando Perotti, already a leading exponent of the cultural circles of Bari.

The opera was performed at the Teatro Piccinni in Bari on January 20, 1900 and achieved a triumphant success that determined no less than 14 performances. In spring he landed at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, receiving the congratulations of the musicians Umberto Giordano and Alberto Marchetti.

The young teacher, now consecrated full musician, then returned to Bari to take up the post of director of the "Schola Cantorum" of the Basilica of San Nicola, after having passed in Rome a ministerial competition; he will cover that position from 1901 until 1911. For Schola he composed a lot of sacred vocal music, masses and polyphonic pieces mostly unpublished, among which stand out Inno a San Nicola, Messa degli Angeli, and Missa in Honorem Sancti Nicolai.

In Bari he met Goffredo di Crollalanza, with whom he designed his second opera, Dea, inspired by the novel Les nuits du Pére-Lachaise by Léon Gozian. The opera will be represented in the inaugural season of the new Teatro Petruzzelli, on April 11, 1903, by the will of the Petruzzelli brothers and the impresario Antonio Quaranta, who saw in the young composer a Pugliese musician who would give prestige to the theater.

In 1904 he married Angela Scannicchio, an amateur singer with a beautiful soprano voice, who collaborated with him on the writing of the third opera Fasma, on a libretto by Arturo Colautti; in 1908, Fasma was set up at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan in the autumn season, under the commanding direction of Tullio Serafin. Fasma also collected flattering judgments, expressed in the Pugliese and Milanese newspapers, which recognized in the young composer a valid promise for Italian opera. The work was bought and printed by the publisher Sonzogno, who in 1909 commissioned him to put to music the libretto entitled Czernagora by the Roman writer Francesco Saverio Kambo (1878-1933). The work is now lost, as is the Maria di Trento, inspired by the novel "Il Destino" by Nicola Misasi. After his resignation from the Schola Cantorum di San Nicola (1911), La Rotella devoted himself intensely to the direction of operas and orchestras at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, but also abroad in Egypt, France, Belgium, North America and Mexico, and seven in Nice, Barcelona, ​​and Budapest.

He moved again in 1912 to Milan, where he was soon involved in the war events of the First World War. In 1916 he published Gorizia, a piano composition inspired by the entry into Gorizia of Italian infantry troops, on 9 August 1916. In 1920 he set off for a musical tour in America (New York), South America and Mexico, a tour soon interrupted to stay close to the family. In fact, he returned to head in Italy and was fascinated by the figure of Gabriele D'Annunzio, enjoying his esteem. He composed the Inno a Fiume (1920) on the text of D’Annunzio, who rewarded him with the order of the "Stella d’Oro" of Fiume.

After the war, La Rotella resumed a full activity as a conductor, leaving out the composition.

From 1920 to 1928 he was invited as a concert conductor and orchestra conductor in various Italian and foreign theaters. Milan, Verona, Budapest, Monte Carlo are the stages of his successes, where he directed a vast theatrical and symphonic repertoire: Mozart, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Debussy , Mussorgsky. In Bari, on the occasion of the second centenary of the birth of the composer Niccolò Piccinni, he brought back to the stage La Cecchina ossia La buona figliuola on stage, directing the first full performance in 1928 at the Petruzzelli Theater. In that year he also resumed the compositional activity with the pastoral sketch for orchestra Mattino della Montagna (1928), dedicated to Giuseppe Augusto Napoleone Gorjux. In 1929 he composed Poema di Gioia for orchestra, and dedicated himself to the composition of Corsaresca, "tragic vision" on a libretto by Enrico Cavacchioli.

In 1933 he participated precisely with Corsaresca in the National Competition held every three years in Milan by the Corporazione dello Spettacolo. The opera won, on equal merit with Donna Lombarda by Alessandro Cicognini, and was represented in an experimental form (without costumes or scenes) at the Palazzo dell'Arte in Milan (September 24, 1933). Several set-ups followed in Rome, Turin, Bari and finally Bitonto. In 1933 the famous impresario Raoul Samuel Gunsbourg (1860-1955) called him to assume the post of permanent director of the Opéra of Monte Carlo, a mandate that he held until 1950. In Monte Carlo he met the major celebrities of the time, such as Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter , Klempere, Rabaud, Richard Strauss and Dimitri Mitropoulos, who in 1935 directed a premiere of Corsaresca in the form of Suite Sinfonica in 5 tempi. The great Richard Strauss, in memory of La Rotella's passionate direction of his Arabella, gave him a copy of the score and paid him homage to his "long and thin" wand.

 On February 1st, 1934, he returned to Bari to take over the management of the then called Liceo Musicale Consorziale "Piccinni", which he held until 1949, with a 45-day annual leave permit to fulfill the commitments of Monte Carlo.

In 1940 there was a first draft of the last opera by Maestro La Rotella, initially called La Fattoria (also La ragazza della Fattoria) on the text of the librettist and playwright Arturo Rossato, a brotherly friend of long standing. The untimely death of Rossato (1942) severely afflicted La Rotella, who only after a long work of reorganization completed the drafting of the work with the title Manuela (1944). It was represented in 1948 for the scenes of the Municipal Theater of Nice (March 4, 1948), performed under the direction of the author (followed by replicas in Catania and Bari).

In 1949 he had to leave the position of Director at the "Piccinni" Liceo Musicale and he continued his conducting activity with intense fervor. From this moment he composed above all sacred and chamber music: Preghiera alla vergine  (1952) for string orchestra on the text of the Armenian poet Hrand Nazariantz; Poema sinfonico (1955), the Stabat Mater (1957) in homage to the genius of Thomas Traetta (1727 - 1779), other sacred music and Messa su temi gregoriani (1960).

He died in Bari on March 20, 1963, at age 83, watched over by his caring daughter Wanda.

M.G.M