It is a pleasure to report that Ennio Morricone’s score for Adrian Lyne’s 1997 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita has finally been issued on CD. In his classic 1962 version, Stanley Kubrick successfully mined the novel for its wit and black comedy. In the latest interpretation, director Lyne chose to emphasize the heartbreak suffered by the obsessed, hypercivilized Humbert (Jeremy Irons) at the hands of 12-year-old nymphet Dolores Haze (Dominique Swain). Despite its controversial – and usually misunderstood – subject matter, the new Lolita is more mundane than provocative. Morricone’s score attempts to reverse this impression. “My music follows the film’s vicissitudes,” he comments in the booklet-notes. “It’s sensual, romantic, with moderation and measure. And as usual my personality and stylistic elements come to the surface.” These traits include subtle entrances, wispy string writing and a haunting lushness in his melodic constructions. The melancholia of the main theme is somewhat offset by chromatic, dissonant music for Clare Quilty (Frank Langella), the third arc of this unorthodox romantic triangle (“Quilty”, “Requiescant”). A characteristic Morricone score, then, which does not suffer by being divorced from this rather tame picture. '