Ennio Morricone

Quartet Records, in collaboration with GDM and EMI General Music Publishing, presents a remastered reissue of BLUEBEARD (1972), in full stereo for the first time. It is one of the most bizarre-yet-beautiful Ennio Morricone scores composed during the busiest period of his career. The film is a weird co-production directed by Edward Dmytryck, produced by Alexander Saldkin, and starring Richard Burton, Rachel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon and Agostina Belli.

The plot of the film is loosely based on a French folk tale about a nobleman whose last wife becomes curious when he tells her that she can enter any room in his castle except one. In that room, he keeps the corpses of all his previous wives, whom he has murdered. Ennio Morricone divided his score between the melancholic, the macabre and the parodic. One senses his intention to delve deeper into the psychology of the characters and to imbue the images with irony, moving from black comedy to bourgeois horror drama.

The album of BLUEBEARD has been released several times on LP and CD since its first appearance in 1972 on the General Music label. In 2011, GDM CD Club released an expanded limited edition, supervised by the composer and produced by Dániel Winkler and Claudio Fuiano, containing all the music recorded for the film, which quickly sold out. This is a reissue of the same program, revised and mastered by Chris Malone from first-generation stereo master tapes. The booklet includes liner notes by Miguel Angel Ordóñez discussing the movie, the music and the composer.