It swashes, it buckles, it rouses, it soars -- and that's just the incidental music.

The passionate musical score of the Stratford Festival's 2000 staging of The Three Musketeers is now available compact disc.

The score is by composer-conductor Berthold Carriere, director of music at the Ontario fest since 1975.

"Inspired by the music of Tchaikovsky as well as by Dumas' novel, Berthold has created an original score that not only forms part of the inner fabric of the work but serves as a character -- the narrator, leading the audience through the episodic structure of the work," said Stratford artistic director Richard Monette.

The disc is available through The Theatre Store at Stratford or via e-mail at [email protected]. Proceeds from the sale benefit the nonprofit festival. Stratford commissioned former festival dramaturg Peter Raby to adapt Three Musketeers in 1968, and the swashbuckler was previously presented that year and in 1988.

Carriere, in addition to conducting musicals, concerts and operettas for the Stratford Festival, has composed music for The Tempest, She Stoops to Conquer and The Winter's Tale.

-- By Kenneth Jones