Reply To: Music
Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (1745–99)
Joseph Bologne was born in the decade after Haydn and before Mozart.
He was the Caribbean child of a multi-racial union between a French plantation owner and a Senegalese slave.
His father paid for a top Parisian education, where the grateful son out-competed his aristocratic contemporaries in accomplishments they cherished—fencing, shooting, dancing, running, swimming, riding, violin-playing and musical composition.
He attracted European and American admiration—a “black Mozart”—as well as racial slurs—a “mulatto”.
His exotic appearance conveyed him into the intimate circle of the French royal family (especially Queen Marie Antionette).
During the French Revolution, as a child of slavery, he created a black regiment to fight on the side of the revolution against slavery (his regiment included the black father of Alexandre Dumas, author of “The Three Musketeers”).
His aristocratic associations caught up with him during the Reign of Terror, and condemned him to execution which, through sympathetic intervention on his behalf, was eventually waived.
The movie Chevalier that opens this month is modelled on his fascinating life. Here is its trailer (the fictional violin duel is with Mozart).
The opera Ernestine (1777)
—Music: Chevalier de Saint-Georges
—Libretto: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
——(author of Les Liaisons dangereuses)
The audience to his first opera Ernestine booed it off the stage, and the critics panned it mercilessly, “a talented young American who is also the most skilful gun shooter in France” has ground a much-loved novel into pulp.
Musical fragments that survive the French Revolution come across today as rivetting 18th century drama.
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Ernestine, what will you do?
Have you probed the depths of your heart?
Trapped inside your bitter retreat
See how vain regret
And endless anguish follow you
And ever deepen your unhappiness.
Cruel love, cruel happiness!
Don’t fight the necessary sacrifice,
Delay sharpens the horror.