Renaissance in The North

To lead off our final set of CD Club releases for 2004 comes this Deluxe Edition of one of the great historical epic film scores of the 1960s. Twentieth Century-Fox’s 1965 film would come just two years in the wake of the studio’s colossal mega-production of Cleopatra. Mounting an elaborate epic of the scale of The Agony and the Ecstasy in the aftermath of such a financial cataclysm was an enormous risk. Reed cast his film carefully and wisely. Moses himself (Charlton Heston) would be brought on to play the tormented artist Michelangelo. To play the warrior Pope, Julius II, Rex Harrison, Cleopatra’s own Emperor, Julius Caesar, returned to don the immaculate papal recreations of costume designer Vittorio Nino Novarese. The scope of the production was enormous. For their to-scale re-creation of the Sistine Chapel, Fox constructed in Rome the largest indoor set that had been built anywhere in the world up to that time. The film was captivating and the performances were wonderful. But the score … well, the score was a work of genius. Another veteran of Cleopatra, composer Alex North seemed to go from strength to strength. Spartacus was an unparalleled masterpiece. Cleopatra was mesmerizing and even more groundbreaking. Agony sent North into an altogether different world and he produced a stirringly emotional and thrilling score that ranks with the all-time greats.