The Splendor That Was Rome
Quo Vadis and I go back a long way. About the middle of the last century MGM released two recordings from this film. One was a dialogue highlights album in which, I admit, I have no interest. I want Rozsa's score. MGM also released a 10-in LP, long out of print. It also came out as a 78RPM album. I found one at a sale back around 1972 or 1973. Sadly, the first disk had a small chip on the edge, but the others were in pretty good shape so I was able to make do. An new recording conducted by Miklos Rozsa with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus released in the seventies or early eighties was, to me, a disappointment. The poor mixing made it impossible to catch any of the lyrics sung by the chorus and, I seem to recall, the tempo was too slow. Quo Vadis was based on a novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz set during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, and Peter Ustinov. Genn, as ...