ROME – Italy on Monday cheered Ennio Morricone’s Golden Globe victory for composing the original score for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” which marks the maestro’s first original score for a Tarantino pic, and his first for a Western in decades.

“Maestro Morricone, always a certainty. A source of pride for Italy,” tweeted Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.

Culture Czar Dario Franceschini praised Morricone as a “giant who has made Italian music and movies great all over the world,” also in a tweet.

Morricone, who is 87, has more than 500 movie credits to this name including scores for Sergio Leone’s so-called “Dollars Trilogy” – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West,” ” Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables,” Barry Levinson’s “Bugsby,” and Roland Joffe’s “The Mission,” are among other standouts, to name a few.

Prior to “Hateful Eight” he had previously won Golden Globes for “The Mission,” in 1987, and Giuseppe Tornatore’s “The Legend of 1900” in 2000. But the only Oscar Morricone ever won is an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2007.

Italy’s film community now has high hopes that with “Hateful Eight” Morricone will “score” an Oscar honoring a single movie.

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s my favorite composer,” Tarantino said as he picked up Morricone’s statuette Sunday night at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

“And when I say favorite composer, I don’t mean movie composer; that ghetto. I’m talking about Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. That’s who I’m talking about.”

Their collaboration on “Hateful Eight,” first announced by Variety in June 2015, took place rapidly with Morricone working from Tarantino’s screenplay, rather than scoring specific scenes, similarly to his technique on “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

While Morricone did not attend the Golden Globes, he is expected to make the trek to Los Angeles to be feted by the 11th Los Angeles-Italia Film Fashion and Art Festival, the annual pre-Oscars event comprising movies and music and celebrating showbiz ties between Italy and Hollywood, which will run Feb. 21-27 at the Hollywood and Highland Center. Plans are also underway for him to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on that occasion.