Opera Music

Listening to some Opera courtesy of ENO… Not the English National Opera, I hasten to add but Brian Eno’s music for Argento’s 1987 film. A friend posted a still from the film yesterday on Facebook and I immediately made a plan to dig out the Arrow DVD at the weekend, not having seen it in some years. By a happy coincidence, I was listening to Discreet Music earlier and it sparked a memory of Eno’s unlikely contribution to the film, the 4min dark ambient fog From the Beginning. This particular piece of music to my knowledge is available only as part of the 1988 Cinevox soundtrack album, and interestingly the track entitled Theme For "Opera", found on Music For Films III does not appear on the soundtrack or in the film, but instead can be heard in the Apollo missions documentary For All Mankind. Perhaps Theme For "Opera" was mislabeled at some point but it does sound to my ear like a variation on another cue found on the Opera soundtrack entitled White Darkness, composed by brother Roger Eno, Brian’s collaborator on the score for the NASA film. And worth pointing out that Theme For "Opera" should not be confused with the soundtrack’s opening number, Opera Theme credited to Bill Wyman and Terry Taylor. Confusing, no ?