"The Ecstasy of Gold" (
Italian: L'estasi dell'oro) is a musical composition by
Ennio Morricone, part of his score for the 1966
Sergio Leone film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It is played while Tuco (
Eli Wallach) is frantically searching a cemetery for the grave that holds $200,000 in gold coins. Sung by
Edda Dell'Orso, it stands as one of the most well known of Morricone's themes and one of the most iconic pieces of cinematic score in history.
In October 2020,
Croatian cellist
Stjepan Hauser released a version of The Ecstasy of Gold as a tribute to Morricone, who died three months earlier that year. The song appears on the
HAUSER plays Morricone album.
The main melody and vocals are sampled in the 2022
glitch hop song "Ecstasy of Soul" by electronic artists
Zeds Dead and
GRiZ. The song peaked at #19 on the US
Dance/Electronic Songs chart.[4]
Appears in the 2017 film The Battleship Island during the climactic prison escape set piece where Korean prisoners board a boat while fighting off Japanese soldiers.
Appears in the 2022 documentary film Fire of Love.
Television
The episode "XCIII" in Samurai Jack's5th season pays homage to the cemetery scene when Jack hides from the Daughters of Aku in a stone coffin within a ruined temple (complete with a reimagining of The Ecstasy of Gold).[citation needed]
The
Danish National Symphony Orchestra included The Ecstasy of Gold in the second half of their YouTube video "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly". The featured soloist was soprano Christine Nonbo Andersen. Since the video's release on YouTube on January 26, 2018, the video has garnered over 104,003,519 views as of 30 August 2022.[11]
Carolina Eyck has covered The Ecstasy of Gold both singing and playing the
theremin. Since the video's release on YouTube on April 8, 2017, the video has garnered over 8.7 million views as of April 2022.[12]
Radio
Used on the XM Radio show Opie and Anthony as its opening song preparing its listeners for the ensuing battle they had daily.[citation needed]
^Naruke, Michiko & King Records staff (2006). AZA Entertainment (ed.). Wild Arms Piece of Tears Songbook. (packaged with
Wild Arms Music the Best -feeling wind-). King Records. p. 4.