Plot
In the late 1770s Mozart visits Paris. [3] [lower-alpha 1] He is performing on stage when a man who introduces himself as Joseph Bologne requests to accompany his performance of Violin Concerto No. 5. Initially, both Mozart and the audience underestimate Joseph, but once he impresses them with his performance, the two musicians perform battling cadenza pieces, ending in a triumph for Joseph.
Joseph is born in Guadeloupe to Georges de Bologne [ fr ], a white French slaveowner, and Nanon, a young slavewoman of African descent, on Bologne's plantation. As a child, Joseph is taken to a boarding school in Paris after his father notices his skills in music, dancing, and fencing. Joseph is harassed, bullied, and mistreated by many of his white peers and white teachers but excels at his studies in violin playing and composition. At the royal court, Marie Antoinette is impressed after seeing him win a fencing contest, and she grants him the title "Chevalier" (French for "knight") de Saint-Georges. Saint-Georges becomes a favored companion of the Queen and is a popular member of the court. Saint-Georges also attracts the attention of many female suitors, particularly Marie-Madeleine Guimard, but he falls in love with Marie-Joséphine [ fr ].
Saint-Georges seeks to become the director of the Paris Opera, but the committee in charge favors a rival, Christoph Willibald Gluck. He goes to Marie-Joséphine's cousin, Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, who agrees to produce an opera he has written to demonstrate his talent. Marie-Joséphine agrees to be the lead singer of his opera, even though her husband, Marc-René de Montalembert, refuses to allow her to perform. She leads the opera anyway and begins an affair with Saint-Georges.
After his father's death, Saint-Georges' mother is freed from enslavement, and he pays for her to join him in Paris. However, he slowly grows to resent his mother as she sees him as rejecting his true self in order to appease the white-dominated society around him. He is also ambivalent to the growing social discontent, intellectual discourse, and the large black population that surrounds him in Paris.
Marie Antoinette informs Saint-Georges that the committee will never choose him because no performer will work under a black man. She refuses to defend him and compromise her own standing among the nobility. Saint-Georges attends Gluck's debut and drinks heavily. After he publicly insults Gluck, Guimard, and the Queen, Marc-René has him restrained and beaten for dishonoring his wife. Months later, Marie-Joséphine gives birth to a mixed-race child; the infant is killed on her husband's orders. Now ostracized from high society, Saint-Georges becomes close with his mother and embraces his true heritage.
As the French Revolution begins, Saint-Georges organizes a concert to raise funds for the anti-royalist faction. Marie-Joséphine and Marie Antoinette both visit him separately, but he rejects their attempts to win back his friendship. The Queen threatens to revoke his status as Chevalier and have him arrested if he puts on his concert. Saint-Georges plays the concert anyway, with his natural hair no longer hidden by a powdered wig, and is nearly arrested by Marc-René. The audience members, however, rise against the officers, and Marc-René is forced to let him go. Saint-Georges walks out, passing the Queen and protestors.
A textual epilogue reveals that, in 1802, Napoleon prohibited Chevalier's music productions and re-instated slavery in French colonies.
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Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George(s) was a French violinist, conductor, composer and soldier. Moreover he demonstrated excellence as a fencer, an athlete and an accomplished dancer. His historical significance lies partly in his distinctive background as a biracial free man of color. Bologne was the first classical composer of African descent to attain widespread acclaim in European music. He composed an array of violin concertos, string quartets, sinfonia concertantes, violin duets, sonatas, two symphonies and an assortment of stage works, notably opéra comique.
The Paris symphonies are a group of six symphonies written by Joseph Haydn commissioned by the Count D'Ogny, Grandmaster of the Masonic Loge Olympique. Beginning on 11 January 1786, the symphonies were performed by the Olympique in the Salle des Gardes du Corps of the Tuileries, conducted by Saint-Georges.
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Gabriel Banat or Gábor Bánát was a Romanian-born American classical violinist, conductor and musicologist.
