Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements ( ISBN 0-224-01009-3) is Anthony Burgess's fictional recreation of the life and world of Napoleon Bonaparte, first published in 1974 (by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Alfred A. Knopf in the US). Its four "movements" follow the structure of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, known as the Eroica. Burgess said he found the novel "elephantine fun" to write.[ citation needed ]
Burgess's Bonaparte is a cuckold suffering from heartburn and halitosis who is portrayed as a wily seducer of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. His conquest of Egypt is a central theme of the novel, which presents a comedic but detailed and revealing portrait of an Arab and Muslim society under occupation by a Christian Western power.
Beethoven had originally dedicated his Third Symphony to Bonaparte. But when he learned that Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor, he tore the dedication from the manuscript. When the work was published it was titled, Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'Uomo (Heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man), known to posterity as the Eroica.
The novel is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, who had directed the film adaptation of Burgess's earlier novel, A Clockwork Orange . Kubrick had intended to make a biographical film about Bonaparte, but was dissatisfied with his own screenplay. They corresponded, then met in December 1971. Burgess suggested to Kubrick that the structure of the film could be based on the Eroica symphony, and was asked by Kubrick to write a novel based on this concept to serve as the basis for a screenplay. Using his own knowledge of symphonic structure, Burgess based his writing closely on the sequence of Beethoven's work, with Napoleon's funeral followed by a resurrection. In June 1972 he sent the first section to Kubrick, who responded with regret [1] that the treatment was unsuitable for a film, writing, "the [manuscript] is not a work that can help me make a film about the life of Napoleon." Freed from these constraints, Burgess developed the work into an experimental novel. He reworked the material into a stage play called Napoleon Rising for the Royal Shakespeare Company, but it remained unperformed in his lifetime. It was first performed in a radio adaptation for the BBC on 2 December 2012. [2]
Burgess suggested that reviews on both sides of the Atlantic were "mixed", with negative reviews from Peter Ackroyd in The Spectator , and from The New Yorker . [3]
Two years later, when the novel was published in French, Burgess noted that reviews were more positive. [4]
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. According to Burgess, it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
Barry Lyndon is a 1975 period drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter, and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of a fictional 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position.
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films—almost all of which are adaptations of novels or short stories—cover a wide range of genres and feature innovative cinematography, dark humor, realistic attention to detail and extensive set designs.
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
The Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1811 and 1812, while improving his health in the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz. The work is dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.
The Symphony No. 3 in E♭ major, Op. 55, is a symphony in four movements by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Terry Southern was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was also at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.
Alex is a fictional character in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the same name, in which he is played by Malcolm McDowell. In the film, his surname is DeLarge, a reference to Alex calling himself The Large in the novel. In the film, however, two newspaper articles print his name as "Alex Burgess", a reference to Anthony Burgess. In addition to the book and film, Alex was portrayed by Vanessa Claire Smith in the ARK Theatre Company's multimedia adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, directed by Brad Mays.
Eroica is a 1958 Polish film by Andrzej Munk, and his second feature film after Man on the Tracks (1956). Eroica is composed of two separate stories, presenting satirical critiques of two aspects of the Polish character: acquisitive opportunism, and a romantic fascination for heroic martyrs.
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian Britain.
Egmont, Op. 84 by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine pieces for soprano, male narrator, and full symphony orchestra. The male narrator is optional; he is not used in the play and does not appear in some recordings of the complete incidental music.
Mozart and the Wolf Gang is a 1991 novel by Anthony Burgess about the life and world of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Published in the U.K. under this title, in the U.S. it was published as On Mozart: A Paean for Wolfgang, Being a Celestial Colloquy, an Opera Libretto, a Film Script, a Schizophrenic Dialogue, a Bewildered Rumination.
Andrew Timothy Birkin is an English screenwriter and director. He was born the only son of Lieutenant-Commander David Birkin and his wife, actress Judy Campbell. One of his sisters is the actress and singer Jane Birkin.
Eroica is a 1949 Austrian film depicting composer Ludwig van Beethoven's life and work. The film is directed by Walter Kolm-Veltée, produced by Guido Bagier with Walter Kolm-Veltée and written by Walter Kolm-Veltée with Franz Tassié. It was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.
Eroica is a BBC television film that dramatises the first performance of Beethoven's third symphony, the Eroica. It carries the tagline 'The day that changed music forever'.
Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange is a soundtrack album released in 1972 by Warner Bros. Records, featuring music from Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. It includes pieces of classical music and electronic music by American composer and musician Wendy Carlos, whom Kubrick hired to write the film's original score. Music that Carlos recorded for the film that remained unreleased, including complete tracks, was released three months later on her album Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange.
The following is a list of unproduced Stanley Kubrick projects in roughly chronological order. During his long career, American film director Stanley Kubrick had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these projects fell into development hell or are officially cancelled.
A list of books and essays about Stanley Kubrick and his films:
Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) directed thirteen feature films and three short documentaries over the course of his career. His work as a director, spanning diverse genres, is widely regarded as being extremely influential.
The composer Ludwig van Beethoven has been the subject of a number of biographical films.