Nel segno di Roma - Ponzio Pilato - Il Colosso di Roma Muzio Scevola

With this release of three OST written by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, one of the most important Italian film music composers, Digitmovies is proud to present the eleventh volume of the series dedicated to the Italian Peplum. All of these scores are now available for the absolutely first time on CD. As always, this project has been possible thanks to the friends at C.A.M., who have helped us one more time so that we could use the mono master tapes kept in their historic vaults. "Nel segno di Roma" (aka "La regina del deserto", "Sign of the Gladiator") is a 1959 movie directed by Guido Brignone starring Anika Ekberg,Georges Marchal, FolcoLulli, Chelo Alonso, Gino Cervi, Lorella De Luca and Jacques Sernas.Zenobia, queen of Palmira (Ekberg), revolts against Rome and defeats its troops, but unfortunately she commits the mistake to fall in love with the Roman consul Marco Valerio (Marchal). The OST of "Nel segno di Roma" appears in its complete form and Angelo F.Lavagnino has compo sed an epic choral main theme called "Il simbolo della gloria" ("The symbol of glory") (Tr.1) and reprised in an instrumental version in Tr.2. The scene where Marco Valerio is kept as a slave is scored with atmospheric music for organ, percussions and choir (Tr.3) and sacred music functions as background to the temple sequence (Tr.5). Battle music tracks for brass and percussions are also not missing (Tr.9,Tr.15,Tr.17,Tr.18,Tr.19). The composer has written a delicate love theme for Zenobia and Marco Valerio with an exotic flavour that breaks the war atmosphere of the story and is introduced in Tr.12, developed in its complete form in Tr.13 and then reprised for orchestra and choir in the Finale (Tr.23). Folkloric music is also featured for the market scene in Palmira (Tr.4) and for the court ballets like Tr.10 (we present this in a stereo mix due to the fact that the track was recorded with two separate tracks for the percussion instruments) and Tr.11. As a bonus track we in clude the short, but brilliant intermission music (Tr.24) (en vogue in those years). "Ponzio Pilato" (aka "Pontius Pilate") was directed in 1962 by Irving Rapper and starred Jean Marais, Jeanne Crain, Basil Rathbone, Leticia Roman, Massimo Serato, Renato Garrone,Gianni Garko,John Drew Barrymore, Raffaella Carrà, Paul Muller and Livio Lorenzon. Pontius Pilate (Marais) remembers his past when he had to fight against the bandit Barabbas just at the same time when Jesus Christ collected his followers through preaching peace. Pilate's life is divided between religion and politics until his divine punishment with the death of his beloved Claudia (Crain). Unfortunately only those eight tracks which we release here on CD have survived till today: "Osanna Pasquale (Tr.1) is the mystical Main Title for orchestra and choir and then reprised in Tr.31 for the sequence of the Palm Sunday (the film version of the Main Title does not feature the choir). M°Lavagnino has written a stron g military march for Pilate's legions (Tr.26), for Jesus of Nazareth the author has composed a sacred theme for strings (Tr.27) which is reprised in Tr.30, and there is also battle music for brass and percussions (Tr.28); a sad and nostalgic theme (Tr.32) for violin and orchestra describes Pilate's mourning for his wife's death."Il colosso di Roma Muzio Scevola" (aka "Hero of Rome") was directed in 1964 by Giorgio Ferroni and starred Gordon Scott, Gabriella Pallotta, Massimo Serato, Roldano Lupi, Franco Fantasia. In Ancient Rome the people finally banish their despised king Tarquinius (Serato) and declare the city as a republic. Tarquinius makes an alliance with the Etruscan king Porsenna (Lupi) to regain his power in the city, but the heroic Roman general Muzio Scevola (Scott) sets out to stop him. For this CD we have created a 4:27 suite with the only original music that Angelo F. Lavagnino has purposely written for the movie: Suspense music for brass, percussions,organ, h arp and strings. All of the other music which appears in the movie itself had just been taken from CAM's library tracks.This OST CD with three scores represents a tribute to the musical art of Angelo Francesco Lavagnino and fills another important gap of Italian Golden and Silver Age soundtracks.