Manuel De Sica

Limited edition numbered to 500 copies. Purple format / 180 grams + CD. Released in 1994, “Della Morte dell'Amore” (known internationally as Cemetery Man) is one of the most fascinating and unconventional films of 1990s Italian cinema. Directed by Michele Soavi and based on the novel by Tiziano Sclavi (the creator of Dylan Dog), the film blends horror, dark comedy, and surreal poetry into a story suspended between life and death, love and madness. The protagonist is Rupert Everett, as Francesco Dellamorte, the caretaker of a cemetery where the dead return to life. Beside him, a mysterious woman (played by Anna Falchi) embodies the obsessive nature of love and the cyclical pattern of desire and loss. Soavi crafts a visionary, melancholic, and ironic film in which death becomes a metaphor for existence itself.
 
Giving voice to this suspended universe is Manuel De Sica, who composed one of his most evocative and underrated scores. The soundtrack for Della Morte dell'Amore is an alluring blend of gothic romanticism, mystery, and lyrical melancholy, perfectly attuned to the film’s tone. The main theme, “Della Morte dell'Amore”, is a gem of melodic elegance — a slow, haunting waltz for piano and strings that encapsulates all the sadness and beauty of the protagonist: a man who loves life but lives among the dead. The motif returns several times throughout the film, serving as a funereal yet tenderly nostalgic leitmotif, capable of stirring deep emotion even in the most macabre scenes.
 
De Sica alternates intense symphonic passages with more intimate and ethereal sections, where piano and flute create a suspended, dreamlike atmosphere. There is also room for darker moments, with dissonant harmonies and subtle electronic tones accompanying the horror sequences — yet always handled with the restraint and elegance typical of his writing. What stands out most is how the music succeeds in uniting Eros and Thanatos, just as the film does: a constant dialogue between passion and death, irony and despair, love and dissolution.