November 9, 2024, Chicago Philharmonic will perform the American Premiere of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Concert. Experience Bram Stoker’s Dracula like never before with Polish master composer Wojciech Kilar’s chillingly thrilling score as the film is projected above the orchestra in HD on a large screen.

In 1992, two decades after THE GODFATHER (1972), Francis Ford Coppola was again looking for a European composer to write the music for his new film. According to Coppola’s diary, the expectations were gigantic:

“Here we go, I’m going again, and it’s DRACULA, it’s going to be Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. I have to do a lot of listening to music because I want to have a truly great composer. I want the score for DRACULA to be like a Prokofiev score for Eisenstein. I want it to be performed by symphonies. I want great music. Not just theater music, but great music.”
— Dracula Director, Francis Ford Coppola, February 15, 1991

And Kilar’s music was a masterpiece: a cinematic cantata for choir and orchestra that was completely different from anything heard in a Hollywood film. Genuinely theatrical, his music finds its element in concert halls when played live-to-picture. It is also inseparable from Coppola‘s sensual conception of fantasy and horror, which owes much to masters like F.W. Murnau and Jean Cocteau.

Coppola’s cinematographic retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel became a box office hit in 1992, crowned by three Academy Awards. Its fresh and bold conceptual energy turned the movie into the most influential vampire film in decades—a film whose opulence and sense of spectacle triggered a whole new wave of contemporary horror films. One of the film’s strengths was returning to Bram Stoker’s original novel instead of adapting the more popular theater play from the 1920s.

Starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, and Sadie Frost, the film became a box office hit and gathered three Academy Awards. It remains the most influential vampire film and score in decades – and resurrects now live in concert.

This movie is Rated R for sexuality and horror violence.

Trailer:

Dracula’s Backstory | Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Introduction to Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula” (1992)

Music: