Bride of Vengeance / Captain Carey, U.S.A.

Intrada returns to the golden age with a Paramount double feature: Bride of Vengeance (1949) and Captain Carey, U.S.A., both with scores composed by Hugo Friedhofer.

Fanfares abound throughout the score for Bride of Vengeance, including musical announcements for Alfonso's court and the royal hunt. Friedhofer extracts the first five notes of the Borgia's masculine, minor-mode fanfare to use as Cesare's menacing calling card. Though Lucretia feels little affection for Alfsono, Friedhofer supplies a haunting string love theme. "I used a lot of closed forms, a sort of quasi- Renaissance type thing," Friedhofer said. "There was a long passacaglia in one place and the Renaissance dance type things." The passacaglia accompanies the music for "The Foundry" and Alfonso's secret construction of a massive cannon to defend his kingdom against Cesare's plot.

Captain Carey, U.S.A. features a lush primary love theme for Carey and Giulia that soars over the "Prelude" and weaves its way judiciously and sparingly throughout the score. Friedhofer's most subtle contribution to the score is his use of the first four notes of "Mona Lisa" in a minor mode as the beginning of the Nazi theme. Friedhofer peppers this cloak-and-dagger whodunit with the expected musical elements for the genre-chromatic melodic and harmonic progressions, string tremolos and plenty of stinger chords.