This week on “Picture Perfect,” in this season of wall-to-wall Biblical epics, I thought we’d enjoy a bit of counterprogramming in the form of music from films about faith, conscience, and the church.
Otto Preminger’s “The Cardinal” was released in 1963. Based on the novel by Henry Morton Robinson, the story follows a fictional Boston Irish Catholic priest from his ordination in 1917 to his appointment as cardinal on the eve of World War II. Tom Tryon played the lead. Tryon would later become a best-selling author himself (as Thomas Tryon), with books like “The Other” and “Harvest Home.”
An interesting factoid: The Vatican’s liaison officer for the production was Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.
As always, Moross’ score is irrepressibly lyrical, even buoyant. The man never seemed to run out of good tunes.
We’ll also have music from “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” from 1968, another film based on a best-selling novel, this time by Morris L. West.
Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, an archbishop who serves 20 years in a Siberian labor camp. He is released and sent to Rome where is promoted to the cardinalate. When the Pope dies, suddenly, Lakota, a dark horse candidate, is elected as a replacement. The story balances Lakota’s internal struggles and personal torments with mounting global turmoil.
The music is by Alex North, who sets the melancholy lyricism of Russian folksong against the steely grandeur of his music for the Vatican.
The remainder of the program will be devoted to movies about missionaries. Georges Delerue provided a noble, austere score for the 1991 Bruce Beresford film “Black Robe,” based on a novel by the Irish Canadian writer Brian Moore, in which a Jesuit priest treks through 1500 miles of Canadian wilderness on a mission to convert the native tribes of the Huron and the Algonquin.
Ennio Morricone’s moving music for Roland Joffé’s 1986 film “The Mission,” which features Jeremy Irons as a Jesuit priest and Robert DeNiro as a reformed slave hunter in the South American jungle, has received a great deal of exposure over the years, both through its use in television commercials and by figure skaters, who made “Gabriel’s Oboe” a recognizable hit. It has become one of Morricone’s best-loved scores.
I hope you’ll join me for “Holy Men and Missions” this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Tag: Ennio Morricone
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The Good, the Bad and the Opera: Ennio Morricone’s “Partenope” Receives Its Belated Premiere
Ennio Morricone’s only opera, “Partenope,” received its world premiere this evening at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples – 30 years after the work’s completion.
The opera relates the plight of the titular siren, who drowns herself after failing to enchant Ulysses. Her body washes ashore and becomes the settlement that grows into Naples. The port city celebrates its 2,500th anniversary this year.The work was commissioned in 1995 by a festival in the Campania region (of which Naples is the capital), but the event went bust before the opera could be performed.
Morricone, the composer of over 500 film and television scores, left roughly 100 concert works. He died in 2020 at the age of 91.Yes, I subscribe to the New York Times, but I probably wouldn’t have seen this today if not for Mather Pfeiffenberger. Thanks, Mather! Enjoy this “gift article” on Classic Ross Amico.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/arts/music/ennio-morricone-opera-partenope.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8E8.uJFH.4_sS3215pW7K&smid=url-share -
Yo-Yo Ma at 70 Celebrating His Film Music
It’s very hard to believe, but the eternally youthful Yo-Yo Ma turned 70 on Tuesday. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we honor one of the most famous classical musicians in the world with music from three of his film projects.
Ma played cello solos in two scores by John Williams – those for “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997) and “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005). Of course, Williams being Williams, both scores were nominated for Academy Awards.
But it was Ma’s contribution to Tan Dun’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) that struck Oscar gold. Dun’s music contributed to what might be termed “The Year of the Dragon,” as Ang Lee’s film received 10 Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. “Crouching Tiger” would slink away with awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and of course Best Original Score.
In addition, Ma recorded a very popular album in 2004 of arrangements for cello and orchestra of film music by Ennio Morricone, with the composer conducting. We’ll round out the hour with one of these, from Morricone’s beloved score to “The Mission” (1986).
I hope you’ll join me, as we salute Yo-Yo Ma at 70, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
BONUS: Ma and Williams on “The Tonight Show,” playing a selection from “Memoirs of a Geisha”
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Ennio Morricone Monument Unveiled in Italy
A new monument to Ennio Morricone was unveiled in Viggiano, a small town in the province of Potenza, in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, on August 29.
You’ll find details at the link. If you’re not fluent in Italian, you’ll have to use your translator function.
Thanks to Mather Pfeiffenberger for the heads-up!
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Spaghetti Western Music for Father’s Day on KWAX
This week on “Picture Perfect,” for Father’s Day, it’s a fistful of spaghetti for Dad.
We’ll be sampling an hour’s worth of distinctive scores from spaghetti westerns – ultra-cool, hyper-stylized entertainments, made by Italians but often shot in Spain, with their multinational casts heavily dubbed in post-production.
Spaghetti westerns frequently turned the conventions of American westerns on their heads. At any rate, the morality of the traditional western was made much murkier, with antiheroes cast as protagonists, usually motivated by greed and revenge. Especially greed.
As with the American film industry, only more so, when the Italians found something that worked, they went into overdrive, churning out literally dozens of knock-offs and imitations a year, until a given genre had run its financially lucrative course.
To this end, over 600 European westerns were produced between 1960 and 1980. The most influential of these were those directed by Sergio Leone, especially those of the so-called “Dollars” Trilogy – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
These, of course, featured then-rising star Clint Eastwood. His co-star in the second and third films was Lee Van Cleef, who in American westerns such as “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” had bit parts as one of the villain’s henchmen, but became an international superstar as the spaghetti western’s most reliable – and bankable – heavy.
We’ll sample from music for the “Dollars” Trilogy, composed by Ennio Morricone, and the “Sabata” Trilogy (which also starred Van Cleef), composed by Marcello Giombini.
Tell Dad it’s all-you-can-eat. We’ll be piling the plates high with music from spaghetti westerns, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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