Overture: Captain Blood (1935)

Hollywood, it could be argued, saved Korngold’s life. Shortly before Hitler’s Germany took over Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938, he was at home in Vienna involved in the preparations for the first performance of what was to be his last opera, Die Kathrin. Early in January he received a telegram from Warner Brothers, for whom he had been writing film scores since 1934, requesting his immediate presence in Hollywood for work on a score for The Adventures of Robin Hood. The director of the Vienna Opera, aware of the political situation and fearing for the welfare of the Jewish composer, advised him to go. He went and did not return to Austria until 1949. Inevitably, the Vienna production of Die Kathrin scheduled for the autumn of 1938 was cancelled by the Nazi authorities.

Korngold’s Captain Blood music, written in 1934 for a Warner Brothers swashbuckler starring Errol Flyn, was his first original film score. Its high quality, well exemplified by the heroic and sumptuously scored Overture (designed to be played over the opening credits), was such that it secured him years of work in the film studios. If that work sapped Korngold’s post-war concert music of its originality – “more corn than gold” is a typical, if harsh, judgement – the invention of the symphonic film score was a considerable achievement in itself.