"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 best 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.[5]
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.[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.[12]
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.[13]
^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.
