Chevalier: The Often Overlooked Contemporary of Mozart Receives Attention from Chicago Institutions and a Major Motion Picture

by Emma Murphy

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, is possibly a name you’ve never heard, but this 18th century biracial nobleman, fencer, and violinist is starting to gain the recognition he has always deserved. In the last two years since performances of his music in Chicago by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and Music of the Baroque, he has become the subject of a film being released this week that is bold enough to match the real man.

As the trailer for “The Chevalier” opens, the French aristocracy is in full swing. It’s a world that young Bologne is not meant to be in, let alone flourish. However, we watch as he encounters each obstacle with the passion and determination to prove himself equal to his white, upper-class peers. His fight for recognition leads Bologne to work harder than all of his schoolmates: to become as successful as possible at all he attempts, from sword fighting to composing.

Eventually, we watch as Bologne swaggers into a full auditorium mid-concert, with charisma and confidence, and challenges a young Mozart to a violin duel. Mozart agrees, before being shocked to discover someone with similar skill. Bologne astounds Mozart and the crowd, earning him a standing ovation and stirring shocked whispers.

Of course, Bologne doesn’t succeed in all that he does, including romance. Joseph Bologne finds himself in the middle of two distinct sides of the French Revolution. He has to choose between the people he was raised to impress, and the people more like his mother, whom he is consistently degraded for resembling. Some choices don’t come with a truly right answer. Searchlight Pictures has produced the biographical drama, which will be released nationwide on April 21.

Joseph Bologne (1745-1799) was a virtuosic violinist, a composer on a par with Mozart, and a renowned fencer caught between opposite worlds. He was born in the Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, the illegitimate son of a French plantation owner and his slave, who was likely born in Senegal. When Bologne was a child, he and his mother followed his father and the rest of his father’s family back to France, where he received an education befitting an aristocrat. He was enrolled in the Académie royale polytechnique des armes et de l’équitation (the Royal Academy of Fencing and Horsemanship).

When Bologne graduated in 1766, he became a Gendarme du roi (officer of the King’s Bodyguard) and a chevalier (knight). It was then that he became known as “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges.” Joseph was his father's only son, and so was treated much better and given more opportunities than most illegitimate children during this time period. Even so, his talent and hard work took those opportunities and made him a truly iconic historical figure.

You might wonder why such an extraordinary figure was forgotten to history. The truth is that Joseph Bologne, while unknown to most people, was never fully forgotten. Music lovers and classical musicians never lost the compositions of Bologne, but it wasn’t promoted the way Mozart’s and Bach’s was. His work has been buried under his contemporaries,' and the music world moved on. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven all continued composing new music during the upheaval of the French Revolution (1789-99); Bologne's story was buried, but never lost. Now, there is a new desire to share it.

Last February, Music of the Baroque teamed up with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and The North Shore Center for the Performing Arts for the Midwest premiere of “The Chevalier,” a concert theater work written, directed, and produced by Bill Barclay regarding the life and work of Joseph Bologne.

Over an email interview Bill Barclay shared his reasons for creating the play. “What prompted my interest was largely shame. Why had I never heard of this person? Why aren't the orchestras I adore playing him? Why do violinists not learn about him in conservatories? Why is so much of his music not yet published? Why is there not even an entry on him in the Grove Dictionary of Music? It's appalling. Much has been done since then, but so much more is still required.”

Barclay’s questions are ones we should continue to ask ourselves. Bologne was well known and successful during his lifetime, even a friend and fellow composer to Mozart, yet his name is not held next to Mozart’s. The new movie has similar aims to Barclay’s in sharing Bologne’s story, a story that deserves more recognition than it has yet received.

In a phone interview, Music of the Baroque’s (MoB) Executive Director Declan McGovern was able to explain why Bologne is suddenly gaining attention. In short, audiences have proven that they care. “I do feel particularly after the death of George Floyd, there has been an upsurge in curiosity and a devotion from arts institutions to pay further attention to providing a stage and a platform for works that had been forgotten, and particularly from composers who have been forgotten and overlooked: composers of color.”

After the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the corresponding rise of social justice campaigns like Black Lives Matter, music historians realized how much diversity matters to audiences. Organizations like CSO and MoB, as well as Searchlight Pictures, have all realized that the stories people want to see now are stories that exemplify the beautiful diversity of people, and show how people of all nationalities, backgrounds, and races have always managed to succeed.

- Playwright Bill Barclay

As Kelvin Harris Jr., who plays Joseph in the movie “Chevalier,” said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s a crazy story, I’ve never heard something like this before. My dad is a classical music teacher at a university, and so I grew up listening to music constantly, and I remember my dad telling me he was the first Black man in the South to be a part of the Philharmonic Symphony. And to see it go as far back as Joseph, it was really cool to just see the origin story and, you know, be a part of that, and in some ways it felt like I was gonna get to honor my dad and Joseph all at the same time, and the lineage that got passed down afterwards.”

“I felt just an unfathomable shame and sadness that I had never heard of this person,” said Minnie Driver, who plays an older woman in the French court of Louis XVI, in the same interview about “Chevalier.” Lucie Boynton plays Marie Antoinette, who received private lessons from Joseph and who became his friend.

Luckily for music and movie lovers alike, Searchlight Pictures isn’t the only organization continuing to showcase figures, including Bologne, who were lost to history. While theaters across Chicagoland will be screening “Chevalier” on its opening day of April 21, other Chicago organizations are continuing to bring Bologne’s pieces alive on stage.

The CSO is one of many committed to showcasing the existing diversity and including more compositions from composers of color, including Bologne. On February 5, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Mutter Virtuosi performed Bologne’s Violin Concerto in A Major, Op. 5, No. 2, as part of a Symphony Center Presents Chamber Music concert.

Music of the Baroque has similar plans, including compositions by Bologne or other composers of color every season. This November, MoB will perform Bologne’s 2nd Symphony, having performed his first in January. In the future, MoB will continue to perform Bologne’s violin concertos and bring to light more compositions by other people of color.

Bologne was known for much more than just his musical compositions, and both the play and the new movie continue to showcase the full figure. He had the social graces to navigate the French aristocracy as well as the empathy to care about the lives of other Black people who often weren’t as lucky as he was. Amid the chaos of the French Revolution, for example, there was a civil war on the colonial island of St. Domingue (now known as Haiti). One side wished for change, and the other to restore slavery. Bologne was bitterly disillusioned by this conflict. This contradiction was part of his downfall.

Standing between worlds, Joseph Bologne was both the son of a slave and the son of a slave master. The color of his skin caused people in the upper classes to look down on him, and not allow him the success of a white man with the same skills. Still, he was the son of an upper class plantation owner who took him to France, to be educated like nobility. Bologne had the musical and military education of the upper class, and the passion to show his worth and to succeed.

Barclay stated in the earlier email interview “...the film plainly helps our goal: to inspire more interest in who else may be missing. I'm confident this is a part of a much larger story of looking for who else has been forgotten by white-washed history. There are brilliant women, people of color, and differently-abled luminaries that haven't yet had their ‘Chevalier’ moment. My dearest hope is that my piece inspires someone else to get to work.”

While Joseph Bologne could certainly inspire even more plays or movies covering other aspects of his life, his story is not the only one to be left in the dark. Now, more than two centuries after his death, Bologne's life is an inspiration, a hint of others yet to be uncovered.