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After two of the most riveting thrillers ever set on American soil, the serial-killer Hannibal Lecter faces FBI agent Clarice Starling in Florence. Composer Hans Zimmer, following the success of Gladiator, is swiftly reunited with director Ridley Scott, and takes a very different musical path from Howard Shore s austere score for The Silence of the Lambs. Paying regard to the Viennese setting and Lecter s cultural refinement, Zimmer s music features many classical allusions. There are nods towards Mozart, an off-key, subtly disturbing Blue Danube and darkly beautiful choral passages evoking sacred mass and the Dies Irae. Alongside some particularly lush and effective string writing, and echoes of Jerry Goldsmith s Viennese thriller music for The Boys From Brazil, fear-laden, digitally pulsating soundscapes are kept to a minimum. Anthony Hopkins delivers three of Lecter s monologues which, while effectively done, will become less welcome with repeated playings. Both The Assassin and Beyond Rangoon demonstrated Zimmer s talent for haunting melody within a thriller context, and for Hannibal he has surpassed himself. There is a Gothic, melancholy grandeur to much of this score, the Wagnerian rapture of To Every Captive Soul and the serene, elegiac finale making this a morbidly enchanting musical dream. --Gary S. Dalkin