I enjoyed reading Variety’s piece about “the forgotten French maestro,” a.k.a. Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges. His story certainly is fascinating: The son of a plantation owner and one of his slaves, he was sent to France for his education, and due to his musical and fencing talents, quickly ascended the social ranks — even amid France’s Code Noir — to the point that he was conducting leading orchestras in Paris and duetting with Marie Antoinette. His work was largely lost to the sands of time after Napoloen reinstated slavery — three years after Bologne died — and Variety makes the salient point that some of the movie’s creative flourishes may undermine the actual biographical material because they make you wonder how much of this is made up, like for example The Great Violin-Off between him and Mozart. But they said it’s pretty entertaining, and the tale of the Chevalier (an honorary title) DOES sound like a fascinating story, the sort of thing that could as easily have been stretched into a Hulu series complementing The Great. Anyway! BEHOLD.
