This week's Flicks in Five features music from one of the world's most famous films, regarded by many to be the greatest of all time, even after 70 years. It's 1941's Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane was radical and experimental; it was from the genius behind radio's Mercury Players and War of the Worlds: Orson Welles, who was just 25 when he played Charles Foster Kane, whose enigmatic utterance, "Rosebud," frames the entire film.
"Rosebud" was the sled that was ripped from the young boy when he was sent off to boarding school and set on the path of a life that ultimately would almost destroy him, at least spiritually and emotionally.
Orson Welles wasn't just the star but also the director and the producer. The film's release in May of 1941 was almost suppressed; there was a big campaign of FBI smears and newspaper articles and blackmail against it, because it appeared to be a very thinly veiled reference to William Randolph Hearst, who was one of the most powerful men in America at that time.
When it was time for casting, Welles turned to his radio pals, the Mercury Players, and many of them starred in Citizen Kane, including Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Everett Sloane.
The score to Citizen Kane is also considered one of the best of all time. It's by Bernard Herrmann, and it includes an aria from an opera that doesn't exist, Salammbô. Herrmann wrote the aria; it's part of the plot of Citizen Kane.
We'll listen to some of Herrmann's music from Citizen Kane, including the aria from Salammbô, sung by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
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