Instrumentation

3(=picc).2(II=ca).3(II=Ebcl.III=Ebcl+bcl).2(II=cbsn) -4.3.2.btrbn.1 - timps - perc(2): tam-t/susp.cym/cyms/SD/military drum/TD/BD/BD+cym/glsp/tgl/hand bell(station)/mark chimes/bell tree - pno(=organ+cel) - harp - strings (min 10.8.6.6.4)

Availability

Full score and parts for hire

Programme Notes

Starring: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert
Director: Clarence Brown
Production Company: MGM USA, 1926
Film Print: 35mm B&W print available from Photoplay Productions (Film Speed: 18-21 frames per second)
Recorded for video

Flesh and the Devil was the first of five films in which Greta Garbo co-starred with her real-life lover John Gilbert. Both on and off screen, theirs was one of Hollywood's greatest romances. Set in Prussia, the film is a melodrama of love, adultery, duels and retribution, based on Hermann Sudermann's novel 'The Undying Past'. Davis uses rich scoring with echoes of 19th-century German Romanticism to complement Garbo and Gilbert's on-screen romance. The glorious love theme, as heard for instance in the garden scene, is one of his finest creations.

Flesh and the Devil

Auditorium Maurice-Ravel, l'Orchestre National de Lyon (Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France)

Orchestre National de Lyon/Timothy Brock

Flesh and the Devil

Rudolf-Oetker-Halle (Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany)

Orchestra of the Staatstheater Braunschweig/Helmut Imig

Flesh and the Devil

60' excerpted version only

Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ, USA)

New Jersey Festival Orchestra/David Wroe

Flesh and the Devil

60' excerpted version only

Westfield Presbyterian Church (Westfield, NJ, USA)

New Jersey Festival Orchestra/David Wroe

Flesh and the Devil

Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg, Luxembourg)

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg/Carl Davis CBE