The world of cinema has generated some of the most recognisable pieces of music in recent times, but sometimes only the classics will do. Before WNO Orchestra take to the stage and explore the cosmos in Play Opera LIVE: Space Spectacular, we’ve looked back through film history to find our favourite classical pieces that soundtracked the scenes that have stayed with us forever.
Stanley Kubrick’s films have endured the test of time and are still regularly classed among the highest rated films of all time, the director often considered a master of the craft. 2001: A Space Odyssey captured the excitement and uncertainty surrounding interplanetary travel upon its release in 1968, a year before the moon landings, and the effect it had on the science fiction genre remains almost unparalleled.
Kubrick’s choice of music has become almost synonymous with the film, and references to some of the iconic scenes have been seen throughout pop-culture ever since the film’s release. The entire soundtrack is composed of classical music, including Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz.
You can hear the Sunrise fanfare from Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in our show for families, Play Opera LIVE, this Autumn.
Anthony Burgess’s novel, A Clockwork Orange, became a modern classic when it was published in 1962. Stanley Kubrick adapted the story for the silver screen in 1971 and used several pieces of classical music throughout his presentation of a dystopian society. The ultraviolent protagonist, Alex DeLarge, is obsessed with classical music, and several of the film’s violent scenes are scored by music such as Rossini’s overtures to his operas The Barber of Seville and William Tell, and most famously Beethoven’s Symphony No 9.
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror film, Alien, has become a fan favourite. While the film terrified audiences at its premiere and spawned later sequels and prequels in the horror sci-fi genre, it features one of classical music’s more soothing pieces. Amid Jerry Goldsmith’s original spine-tingling score, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a light moment of respite among the oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere of the rest of the film.
In Ridley Scott’s 2017 sequel to the original Blade Runner, we hear a short snippet of Peter and the Wolf, composed by Sergei Prokofiev, as the protagonist K switches on the holographic companion, JOI. In the story of Peter and the Wolf, the characters of the duck and the bird argue. The bird mocks the duck, asking how it can be a real bird if it can’t fly. The duck retorts, asking how it can be a bird if it cannot swim. The central question of Blade Runner: 2049 is the same: What makes a human a human?
While composers like Hans Zimmer and John Williams continue to compose some of film’s most emotional and epic scores, the use of classical pieces still serve to further the stories and deepen our understanding of our favourite sci-fi films. If you’d like to experience a series of arias, ensembles and choruses, as well as some of cinema’s most recognizable scores, join us at Play Opera LIVE: Space Spectacular, on tour this Autumn.
