Il massacro della foresta nera

Digitmovies once again explores the wide territory of the Italian Peplum by releasing as Volume XIX the complete OST by Carlo Savina in mono from the movie “Il massacro della foresta nera” (aka "Hermann der Cherusker - Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald" - "Massacre in the Black Forest ") directed in 1966 by Ferdinando Baldi and starring Antonella Lualdi, Hans von Borsody, Cameron Mitchell, Beba Loncar, Peter Carsten. The young Arminius (von Borsody), chief of the Germanic tribe of the Cherusceans, revolts against the Romans from whom he learned the art of military and defeats Quintilius Varus' three legions in the forest of Teutoburg. Later he is defeated by his former friend Aulus Cecina (Mitchell) and dies in battle. The director Ferdinando Baldi almost simultaneously shot "All’ombra delle aquile” and “Il massacro della foresta nera” with the same cast, locations and costumes (for budgetary reasons of the German production company) , but the money that was invested allowed the composer Carlo Savina to write two completely different orchestral OSTs. “All’ombra delle aquile” is already available on CD Digitmovies (CDDM155). For the present CD we have used the mono master tapes of the original session (except for the first 48 seconds of Tr.4 which are in full stereo), and each note recorded at the time appears here. Carlo Savina is perfectly able to balance the historical era of the hero Arminius by writing extremely violent and dramatic battle music (Tr.2, Tr.7, Tr.8, Tr.9, Tr.10, Tr.11, Tr.13, Tr.14, Tr.19) introduced by the epic march of the "Titoli" dominated by the French horns (Tr.1) and contrasting them with a sweet and lyrical love theme (Tr.5, Tr.12, Tr.15 , Tr.17, Tr.18). A proper rescue and preservation of an OST of the Italian Silver Age which pays homage to the career of Carlo Savina.