- Make your way to Santa Croce and visit the cloister in which Hannibal attends an outdoor opera and is introduced to Inspector Pazzi's wife, Allegra. The aria featured in the scene, Vide cor meum, was specifically produced for the film by Hans Zimmer and Patrick Cassidy, setting to music a sonnet by famous Florentine Dante Alighieri from his.
- Vide Cor Meum is a song composed by Patrick Cassidy based on Dante's 'La Vita Nuova', specifically on the sonnet 'A ciascun'alma presa', in chapter 3 of the.
Francis Dolarhyde (June 14, 1938 - 1980) was a serial / mass killer and the main antagonist of both the novel and film, Red Dragon, as well as the 1986 film Manhunter, and in recurring role on the TV show Hannibal.
Hannibal Barca was a renowned general and statesman. He was known for his skill as a commander and his contributions to the army. He was born in 247 BC to Hamilcar Barca who was also a chief in the Carthaginian army. Mago and Hasdrubal were his younger brothers. All his family members were employed in the army and made major contributions to many wars.
Hannibal was born in Tunisia in the Mediterranean region. His name is of Latin origin and unique in Carthaginian culture. He had a difficult childhood as his father was busily engaged in the Mercenary War. The situation was made worse when his sisters both became engaged and he lost their support. Hamilcar decided to improve Carthage's fate after it suffered losses in the First Punic War, and Hannibal supported his father in building a strong army and fighting the Romans. At the age of nine, Hannibal was introduced to Roman and Carthage rivalry. He was made commander-in-chief of his troops and was given extensive training in the army at the same time.
1. The Roman Enemy
Hannibal's life was dedicated to fighting the Roman Empire. His father, Hamilcar, introduced him to the Roman wars and trained him in the Carthaginian army. Rome was always a threat to Carthage, and the Barca family fought against them throughout their lives. When Hamilcar introduced Hannibal to the army, he made him swear to maintain Rome as an enemy. After his father's death in the Mercenary War, Hannibal decided to fight to earn the lost respect of Carthage, and he traveled to Spain to seek support.
Hannibal Barca soon integrated into the Spanish army, and his efforts paid off in a victory over Rome in the First Punic War. The fire in his heart to defeat Rome was real, and he kept his promise to his father to always fight Rome. His aim to earn respect and freedom for Carthage was also achieved.
2. A Good Education
Hannibal was not only an efficient and capable soldier, but he was also well educated, often proving that the pen is mightier than the sword.
Hannibal was a great scholar, and he learnt from the ancient Greek teachers. While his father taught him everything he needed to know about the military and war, his Greek teachers were the key contributors to his all-round development. Hannibal made literary contributions mainly in the field of military books but was also a keen observer of language, especially Greek, and arithmetic.
He committed many of his great battle plans to paper, and being such a military enthusiast, Barca created a manual for the defense of Rhodes while he was in exile after the Second Punic War.
3. Mysterious Death
Hannibal Barca's death has remained a mystery, and archeologists and historians have never been able to provide any real details about it. It is believed that Hannibal died in Gebze, Turkey, possibly of a prolonged fever after injuring his finger with a sword while he was mounting his horse. This theory is often disputed though, and many scholars disagree with the story.
Another widely believed cause of death was suicide. It was thought that he poisoned himself in Libyssa. He had a ring with him which was always loaded with poison, and one theory is that he killed himself on the shores of the Sea of Marmara by consuming the poison. The reason behind his suicide was thought to be his ongoing struggle with the Roman Empire. After the Second Punic War, he was exiled for a long time and had plenty of time to think about his own death. It is thought that this exile and isolation may have led to his suicide.
4. A Great Leader
Hannibal Barca learned to lead from the front. The Punic Wars were the most important evidence of his leadership qualities, and the most famous example of his military excellence was at the Battle of Cannae. His leadership skills and courage enabled his army to win the battle with only a handful of troops against a formidable 60,000-strong enemy.
The Battle of Cannae was considered the bloodiest battle ever fought. Around a quarter of the Roman population was killed, and Hannibal led by example. He left behind a legacy in warfare which is still evident today.
5. Shine to his Name
Hannibal belonged to an aristocratic family, and his surname Barca meant 'shine' or 'lightning,' a name which he certainly lived up to. Hannibal was the one who earned his family respect even after his defeat in the Punic Wars. Hannibal's family and his tribe, the Barcans, were filled with joy on his first victory in the wars. Despite beginning life as the black sheep of the family, Hannibal soon proved them wrong with his courage and skill on the battlefield.
6. Journey to Statesman
Hannibal transformed his life from being a military man to a statesman. With his efficient and strategic brain, his life after the wars was marked by his contributions to the state of Carthage. His plans and policies were unique and efficient, and shone as a new sun in Carthage's dark sky.
After the Second Punic War, he was appointed as a Carthage magistrate. At that time, Carthage was a backward region which was indebted to Rome. Hannibal brought about a revolution in Carthage's traditional and obsolete policies, he changed Carthage's constitution, and took Carthage's officials in hand.
Hannibal was also a major contributor to Carthage's prosperity. He soon realized that the city's debts could be repaid by imposing heavy taxation in the city which had been previously neglected. He also trained some of his army men in agriculture to boost the domestic economy. By 191 BC, Carthage had paid off all its debts in a lump sum. The Carthaginians applauded Hannibal for such a turnaround in the city's fate, but once Hannibal's position as a magistrate expired, he distanced himself from politics because he was weary of Roman influence.
7. Elephant Army
Hannibal had an abundance of elephants in his army, most of which were African elephants. These elephants were much smaller in size than the huge Asian elephants which his enemies used. However, he rode on an Asian elephant, for he believed that the battlefield could be viewed best from that height. This particular elephant only had one tusk, thus it was named Surus. Hannibal felt an affinity with Surus as the elephant was missing a tusk and Hannibal was missing an eye. Hannibal's elephants proved fatal to his enemies as they were as efficient as any sword on the battlefield.
8. Hannibal Lost his Eye
Hannibal wore an eye patch after the Battle of the Trebia. This was not shown in statues and or artwork yet is widely agreed by historians to have been the case. After winning the Battle of the Trebia, Hannibal's army traveled through strange, uninhabited swamp land, made worse by heavy rain. Many of the men's feet began to rot from the waterlogged conditions, and in Hannibal it led to an infection in his right eye. He lost his eye which was subsequently buried. This was seen as a symbol of victory for his countrymen and evidence of Hannibal's courage and fearless attitude.
9. The Alps
Crossing the Alps to fight the Romans was considered one of the greatest acts in military history. Hannibal knew that victory awaited him as his army was stronger than the Roman army on land. With this in mind, he was able to motivate and encourage over 40,000 men to cross the Alps in order to attain this victory.
10. Fabius Maximus
Fabius Maximus was Hannibal Barca's rival. He successfully trapped Hannibal in a valley, and in order to escape, Hannibal had to perform a miracle. He created an illusionary army by tying bundles of logs to around 2,000 oxen's horns. These logs were set on fire, and the oxen were set free, creating chaos and confusion. Convinced he was under attack, Fabius assumed a defensive position, and Hannibal once again came out on top due to his quick thinking and strategic brilliance.
11. Life after War
Hannibal was a disciple of the Greek scholars and enjoyed peace and harmony after the wars. He went to the Seleucid court and became a military scholar but was sent into exile for a long period after his defeat at the Battle of Zama. The Romans did this because they knew he would seek revenge after such an embarrassing defeat. While in exile, Hannibal followed his passion as a writer where he wrote several books on military strategy. Thus, his life after the war was built on the two pillars of the army and books.
12. Loyal Blood
Loyalty ran in Hannibal's blood. This loyalty was inspired in him by his father while they were in Spain where he was taught loyalty towards his homeland, Carthage. Similarly, Hannibal imparted this loyalty to the army he led. Though his troops belonged to different areas, cultures, and customs, he was still able to inspire them to follow him. His troops were devoted to him, they responded well to his orders, and they had no thoughts of betrayal towards him. This loyalty was a major contribution to his success in battle.
Hannibal was a great scholar, and he learnt from the ancient Greek teachers. While his father taught him everything he needed to know about the military and war, his Greek teachers were the key contributors to his all-round development. Hannibal made literary contributions mainly in the field of military books but was also a keen observer of language, especially Greek, and arithmetic.
He committed many of his great battle plans to paper, and being such a military enthusiast, Barca created a manual for the defense of Rhodes while he was in exile after the Second Punic War.
3. Mysterious Death
Hannibal Barca's death has remained a mystery, and archeologists and historians have never been able to provide any real details about it. It is believed that Hannibal died in Gebze, Turkey, possibly of a prolonged fever after injuring his finger with a sword while he was mounting his horse. This theory is often disputed though, and many scholars disagree with the story.
Another widely believed cause of death was suicide. It was thought that he poisoned himself in Libyssa. He had a ring with him which was always loaded with poison, and one theory is that he killed himself on the shores of the Sea of Marmara by consuming the poison. The reason behind his suicide was thought to be his ongoing struggle with the Roman Empire. After the Second Punic War, he was exiled for a long time and had plenty of time to think about his own death. It is thought that this exile and isolation may have led to his suicide.
4. A Great Leader
Hannibal Barca learned to lead from the front. The Punic Wars were the most important evidence of his leadership qualities, and the most famous example of his military excellence was at the Battle of Cannae. His leadership skills and courage enabled his army to win the battle with only a handful of troops against a formidable 60,000-strong enemy.
The Battle of Cannae was considered the bloodiest battle ever fought. Around a quarter of the Roman population was killed, and Hannibal led by example. He left behind a legacy in warfare which is still evident today.
5. Shine to his Name
Hannibal belonged to an aristocratic family, and his surname Barca meant 'shine' or 'lightning,' a name which he certainly lived up to. Hannibal was the one who earned his family respect even after his defeat in the Punic Wars. Hannibal's family and his tribe, the Barcans, were filled with joy on his first victory in the wars. Despite beginning life as the black sheep of the family, Hannibal soon proved them wrong with his courage and skill on the battlefield.
6. Journey to Statesman
Hannibal transformed his life from being a military man to a statesman. With his efficient and strategic brain, his life after the wars was marked by his contributions to the state of Carthage. His plans and policies were unique and efficient, and shone as a new sun in Carthage's dark sky.
After the Second Punic War, he was appointed as a Carthage magistrate. At that time, Carthage was a backward region which was indebted to Rome. Hannibal brought about a revolution in Carthage's traditional and obsolete policies, he changed Carthage's constitution, and took Carthage's officials in hand.
Hannibal was also a major contributor to Carthage's prosperity. He soon realized that the city's debts could be repaid by imposing heavy taxation in the city which had been previously neglected. He also trained some of his army men in agriculture to boost the domestic economy. By 191 BC, Carthage had paid off all its debts in a lump sum. The Carthaginians applauded Hannibal for such a turnaround in the city's fate, but once Hannibal's position as a magistrate expired, he distanced himself from politics because he was weary of Roman influence.
7. Elephant Army
Hannibal had an abundance of elephants in his army, most of which were African elephants. These elephants were much smaller in size than the huge Asian elephants which his enemies used. However, he rode on an Asian elephant, for he believed that the battlefield could be viewed best from that height. This particular elephant only had one tusk, thus it was named Surus. Hannibal felt an affinity with Surus as the elephant was missing a tusk and Hannibal was missing an eye. Hannibal's elephants proved fatal to his enemies as they were as efficient as any sword on the battlefield.
8. Hannibal Lost his Eye
Hannibal wore an eye patch after the Battle of the Trebia. This was not shown in statues and or artwork yet is widely agreed by historians to have been the case. After winning the Battle of the Trebia, Hannibal's army traveled through strange, uninhabited swamp land, made worse by heavy rain. Many of the men's feet began to rot from the waterlogged conditions, and in Hannibal it led to an infection in his right eye. He lost his eye which was subsequently buried. This was seen as a symbol of victory for his countrymen and evidence of Hannibal's courage and fearless attitude.
9. The Alps
Crossing the Alps to fight the Romans was considered one of the greatest acts in military history. Hannibal knew that victory awaited him as his army was stronger than the Roman army on land. With this in mind, he was able to motivate and encourage over 40,000 men to cross the Alps in order to attain this victory.
10. Fabius Maximus
Fabius Maximus was Hannibal Barca's rival. He successfully trapped Hannibal in a valley, and in order to escape, Hannibal had to perform a miracle. He created an illusionary army by tying bundles of logs to around 2,000 oxen's horns. These logs were set on fire, and the oxen were set free, creating chaos and confusion. Convinced he was under attack, Fabius assumed a defensive position, and Hannibal once again came out on top due to his quick thinking and strategic brilliance.
11. Life after War
Hannibal was a disciple of the Greek scholars and enjoyed peace and harmony after the wars. He went to the Seleucid court and became a military scholar but was sent into exile for a long period after his defeat at the Battle of Zama. The Romans did this because they knew he would seek revenge after such an embarrassing defeat. While in exile, Hannibal followed his passion as a writer where he wrote several books on military strategy. Thus, his life after the war was built on the two pillars of the army and books.
12. Loyal Blood
Loyalty ran in Hannibal's blood. This loyalty was inspired in him by his father while they were in Spain where he was taught loyalty towards his homeland, Carthage. Similarly, Hannibal imparted this loyalty to the army he led. Though his troops belonged to different areas, cultures, and customs, he was still able to inspire them to follow him. His troops were devoted to him, they responded well to his orders, and they had no thoughts of betrayal towards him. This loyalty was a major contribution to his success in battle.
Conclusion
Hannibal Barca belonged to a family whose legacy was marked by its military achievements, and Hannibal was able to continue this legacy with the respect he earned during his lifetime. He was amongst the greatest commanders-in-chief, not only for his victories but also for his attitude and bravery. His strategic methods and intelligence earned him the title of 'the father of strategy.'
Hamilcar, his father, taught him to respect to his country, and this loyalty made Hannibal one of the greatest threats the Roman Empire had ever seen. He played a vital role in the battles of Trebia and Lake Trasimene, and the Punic Wars.
His education and intelligence spanned the areas of war and politics, and his optimistic attitude to life shone through in both these areas. This is why his death by suicide remains such a mystery.
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When you hear the name Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a few things spring to mind—and none of them are likely to involve Italian poet Dante Alighieri or opera. Of course there's good reason for this, with Lecter's exotic cooking ingredients superseding his gentler affectations. But even so, when author Thomas Harris first imagined how the character might move in the wild for the novel Hannibal, it was with baroque glee he unleashed the doctor in Florence: Italy's Renaissance city and Dante's medieval stomping grounds.
Hannibal Opera Scene
Director Ridley Scott similarly understood that secret recipe. His film version of Hannibal relishes every Italian colonnade Anthony Hopkins walks under, or the way the shadow of the statue of David casts darkness on its star's face, often as he stands in the same spot where men were hanged or immolated centuries ago. In its better moments, Scott's movie savors that this is a story about a devil who covets the divine; it delights in playing like an opera.
Hence for the picture's best sequence, the filmmakers commissioned a new 'mini-opera,' one that would for the first time put music to verses that Dante wrote more than 700 years ago. And in the decades since the movie's release, those fleeting minutes of music have blossomed into a real, full-fledged opera about to have its world premiere. Once again the doctor's distinct tastes and influences appear singular within the realm of movie monsters.
'He is a character that's so exaggerated and extreme, I'm not sure if a person like Hannibal Lecter really could exist,' composer Patrick Cassidy says when we chat over Zoom, nearly 20 years to the day after Hannibal's release. 'He's a great figure for drama because he is all of these extremes.'
Cassidy should know. Once a young Irish composer who was a relatively new member of Hans Zimmer's large Remote Control Productions film scoring company, Cassidy's sumptuous Italian aria 'Vide Cor Meum' elevated Lecter's Italian sojourn on screen, and placed its composer on the path to eventually becoming a Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia (Knight of the Star of Italy). That's all the more remarkable since Cassidy didn't even speak Italian when he first set a Dante sonnet to music.
Looking back now, Cassidy remarks, 'I was working with Hans Zimmer at the time, who was the composer on the movie. He works on a lot of projects simultaneously and he knew my strength was choral music… They needed an aria and they were shooting the scene in two weeks. So I was in the right place at the right time.'
The sudden impetus for needing an original aria in the movie seems to hail from Scott. In Harris' novel, a similar scene occurs when Dr. Lecter attends the performance of a real symphony written in the 19th century, but for the movie Scott, Zimmer, and producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis wanted something original: an aria based on a Dante poem which Hannibal repeats several times throughout the book and film. Written in 1283 when Dante was just 18, the poet's first sonnet in La Vita Nuova is a paean to Beatrice, the woman he loved. Within its verse, the sonnet includes the following:
Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold
my heart in his hand, and held in his arms
my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.
Then he woke her, and that burning heart
he fed to her reverently, she fearing,
Afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.
– Dante's First Sonnet
Says Cassidy, '[The aria] had to be based on the first sonnet in La Vita Nuova because that sonnet has a metaphor about eating the heart. But of course Hannibal might have taken that in a literal sense.' Indeed, on both the page and screen, storytellers wanted Hannibal to pivot around the uneasy idea of the debonair cannibal giving his heart to Clarice Starling. After all, 'Vide Cor Meum' is Latin for 'Look into My Heart.'
Cassidy, however, had little time to digest these finer details when the opportunity to write the aria arose. Relatively new to Hollywood after being in Los Angeles only a year—and succeeding as a choral composer in his native Ireland with Children of Lir, the first major symphonic work in the Irish language—he was primarily tasked with working on library music at Zimmer's company when the assignment came down: They needed 'a good aria' ASAP.
'There was no room for anything to go wrong in a sense,' Cassidy says. 'Ridley was already in Florence shooting the movie, but Ridley's editor Pietro Scalia came into my studio and he brought in lots of CDs of Italian arias, being Italian himself.' This proved particularly useful because while the composer speaks Italian today, he needed to rely on Scalia's ear while putting Dante's words to music then.
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Cassidy adds, 'Ridley also sent me some sketches, which are very fantastic sketches of what the opera would look like. Of course then there was also Dante's poem. So we started from that, and I think Pietro came back two days later and while I didn't have the full aria written, I had a nice thematic kind of sense at that stage.'
Opera In Hannibal Movie
By his own account, Cassidy estimates he wrote the full aria in under a week.
As a piece of choral composition, 'Vide Cor Meum' is transcendently beautiful. Reliant on choral harmonies and luscious strings, the piece more than recites fragments of Dante; it taps into a sense of revelry and underlying melancholy—bringing out the inherent musicality in Dante's lamentations. This is crucial to both the sonnet and the music's effect, since the original verse was written in a style of poetry later dubbed by Dante to be the 'dolce stil novo' (sweet new style) due to its idealization of Beatrice. This level of worshipfulness was significant for the author since the woman he adored died at the age of 25, four years before La Vita Nuova was released in 1294, complete with new prose around the sonnets in which Dante grapples with her death.
'Vide Cor Meum' brings those aspects out so hauntingly that it's demanded greater attention ever since its inception. Even back in 2000, the piece was originally only meant to exist in its one minute of screen time; yet it was expanded to two and a half minutes at the request of Scott and the De Laurentiis' after they heard that minute of music. And once the film was complete, Cassidy was then asked to turn it into a full aria of more than four minutes, or 'mini-opera,' on the soundtrack.
Says Cassidy, 'Everybody loved the aria instantly, and it was kind of immediate, really, for all the people involved, including Martha and Dino. Ridley especially loved it, and they were all thinking, ‘Maybe you should write a full opera?' But then nobody knew what the opera should be about.' Editor Scalia did offer an amusing suggestion: write a full-length Italian opera about Hannibal Lecter.
It's probably for the best that the Hannibal the Cannibal opera never happened, and as the years passed, everyone, including Cassidy, moved onto other projects. Still, the legacy of 'Vide Cor Meum' continued to grow. In 2007, listeners of the UK's Classic FM ranked the Hannibal score in the top 100 film soundtracks of all time (likely in large part due to 'Vide Cor Meum'), and the piece has appeared in numerous other places, including another Ridley Scott film, Kingdom of Heaven.
'I loved it in that movie,' Cassidy says, 'I thought that was an incredible scene. In many respects I even nearly prefer it in that movie than I do Hannibal.' And as the aria endured, so too did the persistent idea of expanding on it… and on Dante.
In 2010, producer Dino De Laurentiis passed away. While Cassidy had lost touch with the De Laurentiis family over the years, they obviously left a mark on each other, with Cassidy's career rising after 'Vide Cor Meum,' and Dino accepting his Irving G. Thalberg award from the Academy in 2001 to an orchestration of the aria—a development Cassidy suspects Dino's wife had a hand in.
'Martha loves the piece, so I think she probably organized that,' Cassidy says. 'When Dino passed away, I went to the funeral and I was going to pay my condolences to Martha, and there were rows and rows of people around her. But she saw me in the back and she said, ‘Hey, Patrick where's Dino's opera?!''
It's visibly a sweet memory for Cassidy, even as he recalls he didn't tell Martha at the time he'd already begun work on expanding what was originally just a two-minute composition into an opera, one with a specific subject matter: Dante Alighieri.
Cassidy says, 'Maybe two or three years later, I called her into my studio to give her a presentation of what I'd done on the opera and she loved it, and she wanted to be the producer immediately.' He was also able to show why the opera could only ever be about Dante, the medieval writer who similarly electrified the imaginations of Thomas Harris and his most famous fictional character.
'I think Dante was transitioning out of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance,' Cassidy says about the poet. 'Especially in La Vita Nuova, the poetry is in the troubadour tradition of the idea of chivalric love. So it's kind of a foreign idea to us. When we think of love [it's] not as an idealization, but just a passion in a sense… for him [love] was quite religious, and he often associates Beatrice with the Virgin Mary.' That sense of an almost deification of love—Amor is a godlike character in La Vita Nuova—also gave Cassidy the space to build a story out of Dante's life, as opposed to just adapting his most famous and macabre work, La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy).
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'I realized the mistake would have been to do an opera about La Divinia Comedia where you had the Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio,' says Cassidy. 'What I did instead was [make] the opening scene in the opera be the first meeting of Beatrice and Dante when they're both 12 years of age. And then the opera finishes when Dante, at the end of Paradisio, meets Beatrice again in the heavenly paradise, which is the Garden of Eden. So that was the core of the story, it's a love story of Dante in pursuit of Beatrice.'
It's a shrewd choice since many forget that at the end of La Vita Nuova, Dante concludes by saying he will write an epic poem unlike any other, and it will be dedicated to Beatrice. Nearly 30 years later, and about 12 months before Dante's own death in 1321, The Divine Comedy was published with its most famous passages about Dante descending down through the nine circles of Hell. However, it also features Dante ascending to the heavens where he finds Beatrice as his guide to Paradise. When these elements are combined, you have the stuff of opera.
'The second act is Inferno,' Cassidy says, 'And at the beginning [of the act], Dante meets Virgil, and Virgil explains that he has been sent by Beatrice to guide him through the underworld.' In the pits of Hell, 'Vide Cor Meum' will even have a reprise. While the aria appears much as it did in Hannibal during the first act of Cassidy's opera, it's then sung a second time in act two when a siren in the Inferno attempts to seduce Dante, and Beatrice's angelic voice intercedes.
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