In 1958 Heitor Villa-Lobos was commissioned by MGM to provide the music for Green Mansions, a film version of the 1904 novel of the same name by WH Hudson, set in the Amazon rainforest and starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins. But when it was released the following year, only a few minutes of Villa-Lobos’s score had made the final cut, and even that had been arranged and reorchestrated to the point of being almost unrecognisable. Undaunted, he reworked the music he had composed, adding further choral and solo vocal numbers to create a gigantic work in 23 movements. Floresta do Amazonas is part oratorio, part symphonic poem and lasts almost 80 minutes.
