2023-06-19 16:27:07
Anything you can do, I can do better. According to this motto, the classic battle is now rising. One virtuoso of the strings outperforms the other, drives him into a corner, wants to outdo him, weaken him, with ever new melodic-technical lunges and variations. And the master of sound from far away Salzburg, who wants to establish himself in front of the Paris audience, also supports the racist resentments of the audience and viewers, who are enthusiastic about so much ringing and sparkling rivalry, with wild insults.
As an overture to Steven Williams’ colorful rococo musical costume film “Chevalier” (to be seen at Disney), it’s actually pretty well invented. But just invented. Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (played lurking and full of temper by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met on the Seine in 1778, they even lived together in a lodging for a few months after the death of Mozart’s mother. One was 31 and the other 22 years old.
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But Mozart had long since ceased to play the violin as a child prodigy, and Boulogne, who has recently reappeared in concert programs as the “black Mozart”, never measured himself against him in beef fever.
The chevalier (born in Guadeloupe in 1745 and died in Paris in 1799) is nonetheless currently making a career again. Whether for reasons of his – now finally recognized – ability or because he is not only en vogue in a contemporary way, because he fits so well into the “woke” drawer of the diversity that is currently being exemplified by the theaters and concert halls in this country, that is in the balance held.
The son of a French plantation owner and a Senegalese slave, who had to serve as his father’s wife’s maid, succeeded in breaking through racial barriers and becoming the star of the music world of the Ancien Regime in France. But his career was to be short-lived and always in jeopardy.
The best fencer in Europe
After his father died young, Joseph Boulogne came to France with his mother at the age of three (the film, shot in the Czech Republic, prefers to tell a sentimental fairy tale here, too). He received musical training, probably from the violin virtuoso Pierre Gaviniès. In 1764 he was admitted to the Garde du corps du roi in Versailles. Antonio Lolli, Carl Stamitz and François-Joseph Gossec composed for him.
Because of his good manners, his artistic and athletic skills, Joseph Boulogne was a adored personality, and even excelled as a swimmer and ice skater in the Paris Société. Boulogne was considered the best fencer in Europe, as a 13-year-old he had wielded the sword for the first time.
He fought one of his most famous duels against the Chevalier d’Eon, who sometimes lived as a woman and was possibly transsexual, in 1787 at London’s Carlton House. He was a colonel in the Légion Saint-Georges, the only regiment on the continent at the time in which black soldiers served.
Joseph Bologna, Knight of Saint-Georges (1745 bis 1799)
Quelle: picture alliance/Heritage Images
Saint-Georges’ real musical career began in 1769 when he joined the Concert des Amateurs as principal violinist. In 1773 he took over its management. With around seventy members – some professional opera musicians, some well-trained amateurs – it was the largest orchestra of its time.
Joseph Boulogne even commissioned a composition from Joseph Haydn, and some of his “Paris Symphonies” were premiered by him. In 1777 the first of his operas was performed at the Théâtre-Italia. Even before that – the film is correct – he was even traded as head of the opera for a short time: But some of the star singers didn’t want to receive instructions from a “mulatto” …
Where Gérard Corbiau’s “Farinelli” film in 1994 sparked new interest in the fascinating phenomenon of castrati, “Chevalier” attempts to turn Joseph Boulonge into a music-making revolutionary who (filmed in the well-preserved Baroque theater in Český Krumlov) as a kind of David Garrett of the revolution the people fiddle on the barricades.
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And by the way, he also insults Queen Marie Antoinette and Christoph Willibald Gluck (who historically had nothing to do with him) so much that he would have been sent to the guillotine for that alone. A black child with a married marquise, who is actually just an unhappy singer, is also attributed to him.
This is how a dramaturgically poor, woodenly played sloppily ends, which tries to turn this completely conventional musician into something that he just wasn’t. And it shows once again how much the slavery reintroduced in France by Napoleon in 1802 made it clear to the blacks who thought they were free for a brief moment where they still belonged in a white society – at the very bottom.
And yet pastel-enlightened series like Bridgerton try to make us believe that Regency England was color-blind and that blacks could have played a real role in society…
Joseph Bologne’s symphonies
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It’s also a pity that “Chevalier” only reports on the further life of Joseph Boulogne with a few inserts instead of illustrating it. In May 1789, Saint-Georges was present at the convening of the States-General and later became a captain in the Garde Nationale. He also led an amateur orchestra. From September 1792 he had his own command with 1,000 soldiers from the French colonies under his command – the Légion franche de cavalerie des Américains et du Midi.
Despite this, Saint-Georges was denounced and imprisoned during the Welfare Committee’s reign of terror in 1793. In October 1794 he was released but was discharged from the army. In 1796 he accompanied a friend to Haiti. In 1797 he returned disappointed to Paris, where he died impoverished two years later.
Musically, Joseph Boulogne can be classified as part of the gallant, short-lived French classic. His teachers and Gossec shaped his style. Influences from the Mannheim school and from Haydn and the young Mozart can also be seen. He composed 14 violin concertos, two symphonies, 18 string quartets, twelve harpsichord and violin sonatas, songs and six operas.
A single opera survives
Admittedly, many notes were destroyed, so only one opera “The Anonymous Lover” (“L’Amant anonyme”) has survived, premiered on March 8, 1780. It is about a young aristocrat who doesn’t dare to talk to his best friend to confess his love, and instead adores her as an anonymous admirer. The Venezuelan soprano Samuel Mariño only recently sang an aria from this opera in his debut recital (Decca). The two-act work, complete with around 70 minutes of music, has since been released by Cedille Records.
Of course, they flow elegantly superficially. One quickly notices that this work had not disappeared into the dust of the archives for no reason. The Theater St. Gallen has worked hard on “L’Amant anonyme” this season and brought it to the stage above all as the story of Joseph Boulogne. In Essen they will try again next season, again in a kind of override.
And the surviving violin concertos, which even Anne-Sophie Mutter is striving for, are pretty little things, mostly only ten minutes short despite three movements, fine as a loosening up piece, fluffy, delicately floating, entirely devoted to convention. In any concert hall in the world today, no matter who is playing, any Mozart violin concerto would effortlessly win the battle over the music of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Which doesn’t change the fact that you should deal with the exciting fate of this historically flamboyant figure. But, please, in better films.
#Racism #Classics #Tale #Black #Mozart