Track Listing

1. Dear Clarice (feat. Anthony Hopkins)
2. Bach: Aria da Capo (from "Goldberg Variations")
3. Tha Capponi Library
4. Gourmet Valse Tartare
5. Avarice
6. For a Small Stipend
7. Firenze di notte
8. Virtue
9. Let My Home Be My Gallows (feat. Anthony Hopkins)
10. The Burning Heart (feat. Anthony Hopkins)
11. To Every Captive Soul
12. Vide Cor Meum

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7075 in Music
• Released on: 2002-03-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English, Italian, Japanese
• Dimensions: .21 pounds
• Running time: 54 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
After two of the most riveting thrillers ever set on American soil, the serial-killer Hannibal Lecter faces FBI agent Clarice Starling in Florence. Composer Hans Zimmer, following the success of Gladiator, is swiftly reunited with director Ridley Scott, and takes a very different musical path from Howard Shore's austere score for The Silence of the Lambs. Paying regard to the Viennese setting and Lecter's cultural refinement, Zimmer's music features many classical allusions. There are nods towards Mozart, an off-key, subtly disturbing Blue Danube and darkly beautiful choral passages evoking sacred mass and the Dies Irae. Alongside some particularly lush and effective string writing, and echoes of Jerry Goldsmith's Viennese thriller music for The Boys From Brazil, fear-laden, digitally pulsating soundscapes are kept to a minimum. Anthony Hopkins delivers three of Lecter's monologues which, while effectively done, will become less welcome with repeated playings. Both The Assassin and Beyond Rangoon demonstrated Zimmer's talent for haunting melody within a thriller context, and for Hannibal he has surpassed himself. There is a Gothic, melancholy grandeur to much of this score, the Wagnerian rapture of "To Every Captive Soul" and the serene, elegiac finale making this a morbidly enchanting musical dream. --Gary S. Dalkin

Customer Reviews

Great music to sleep too.
There are movie soundtracks.... and then there are movie soundtracks. This one most definitely fits into the latter.

Hans Zimmer has created yet another masterpiece, adding to his already growing collection of perfect music scores. He uses previous melodies and adds them in a rich mix with new styles, for example his "Aria De Capo" [ from "Goldberg's Variations"] intertwined with the haunting "Gourmet Valse Tartare" contribute to make a perfect soundtrack for a perfect movie.

And if it were possible, a finer touch of class is added when we have Sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal playing lead role as part of many of the tracks. Hannibal features in "Dear Clarice", as he reads his letter to Starling, framed beautifully by a chilling yet relaxing piece, "Let My Home Be My Gallows", where Hopkins delivers wonderful Italian - again framed by a slighly more pacy but equally as chilling piece.

And as if that wasn't enough, the score delivers further: with a variety of atmospheric melodies, such as "Virtue", "The Capponi Library" and "To Every Captive Soul".

To round it all, and finalize an already perfect album, "Vide Cor Meum", with the Libretto taken from Dante's "La Vita Nuova" provides the emotions that makes your soul feel all tingly; and you just know it's right.

If you buy this album, I recommend also "Goldberg's Variations", as well as Dante's "La Vita Nuova". If they are anything like this album, then you'll certainly be in for a treat.

Finally : as to the point of the summary. I find the best place to listen to this soundtrack is when I am in bed ready to sleep: it has marvellous relaxing qualities.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have done too!

Music that makes your emotions soar...
There are few occasions these days where music will take your emotions to the depths of despair and up to the highest cloud and back before the album is finished. Mostly this happens in film soundtracks and Hannibal is easily one of the finest. There is humour, sadness, heart-pounding atmosphere and some pieces that will make your heart sing and sent your soul alight as the finest music does, and should.
The highlight of the album is Vide cor Meum by Patrick Cassidy - the album is worth buying for this alone. When I first watched the film I became determined to discover which great opera that piece was from, not realising that it was written specially for the film. Rarely will you find a piece of music that makes you want to simply sit back, shut your eyes and just listen, but with Vide cor Meum it is impossible not to. I was shocked and delighted at the simplicity and beauty of this piece, and it marks Cassidy as one of the finest composers of our, and indeed, any age.
The truly amazing aspect of this album is that it is designed to accompany a film that is very dark and disturbing in its imagery, but the soundtrack will make you laugh, cry and fall to your knees with its wry humour and beauty. It is a truly ironic soundtrack for the film, which in many ways fits Hannibal perfectly, as the film and Hannibal himself, are highly ironic and contradictory. It is rare that a soundtrack fits and compliments a film, yet Hannibal accomplishes this expertly. A wonderful collection of widley different musical styles, but one that you will want to play again and again. Buy it and find out for yourself, you wont regret it.

This is very, very good music!
I really enjoy this album. And yes, it is an album and not just the score to a movie. It stands perfectly alone (and really, it does surpass the movie). It perfectly summarise the world of Hannibal, especially with Hopkins narration.