Eroica (2003 film)
Encyclopedia
Eroica - The day that changed music forever is a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television film which dramatises the first performance of Beethoven's third symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

, the Eroica.

The film was directed by Simon Cellan Jones, written by Nick Dear
Nick Dear
Nick Dear is a writer for stage, screen and radio. He received a BAFTA for his first screenwriting credit, a TV adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion....

 and starred Ian Hart
Ian Hart
Ian Hart is an English stage, television and film actor.-Early life:Hart, the grandson of Irish immigrants, was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He is one of three siblings and was brought up in a Roman Catholic family...

, Tim Pigott-Smith
Tim Pigott-Smith
Tim Pigott-Smith is an English film and television actor.-Early life:Pigott-Smith was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, the son of Margaret Muriel and Harry Thomas Pigott-Smith, who was a journalist. He was educated at Wyggeston Boys' School, Leicester, King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, and...

, Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser is a British actor. He attended Moseley Grammar School and the University of Liverpool before going to RADA in 1977 where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor of his year....

 and Frank Finlay
Frank Finlay
Francis Finlay, CBE is an English stage, film and television actor.-Personal life:Finlay was born in Farnworth, Lancashire, the son of Margaret and Josiah Finlay, a butcher. A devout Catholic, he belongs to the British Catholic Stage Guild. He was educated at St...

. The music was played by Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, founded in 1990 by John Eliot Gardiner, performs Classical and Romantic music, using the principles and original instruments of historically informed performance. The orchestra has recorded symphonies, operas, concertos, and other works of Beethoven,...

 and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. It won the Prix Italia
Prix Italia
The Prix Italia is an international Italian television, radio-broadcasting and Website award. It was established in 1948 by RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana in Capri...

 for Performing Arts in 2004.

Plot

The film is set in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 on June 9, 1804, the date of the private, first performance of Beethoven’s third symphony, later to be known as the ‘Eroica’. The performance, and most of the action in the film, takes place at the palace of one of Beethoven’s patrons, Prince Franz Lobkowitz. Midway during the performance, Beethoven tries to get his lover, a widow named Josephine von Deym, to marry him, but she refuses because of the unfair laws regarding child custody - she is a member of the nobility, and cannot marry a commoner without losing custody of her children. Later, composer Josef Haydn, now old and feeble, arrives just in time to hear the last movement of the symphony.

During the last few minutes of the symphony, the film flashes forward, and we see Beethoven going to dinner with his pupil, Ferdinand Ries
Ferdinand Ries
Ferdinand Ries was a German composer.- Life :Born into a musical family of Bonn, Ries was a friend and pupil of Beethoven who published in 1838 a collection of reminiscences of his teacher, co-written with Franz Wegeler...

, where he is told that Napoleon has just declared himself Emperor of France, thereby completely betraying Beethoven's faith in him. In a rage, he crumples up the title page of his symphony, which he originally intended to call the "Bonaparte". As he leaves the performance, Haydn is asked his opinion of the symphony, which he describes as "quite new", and then utters his now-famous and prophetic comment, "From this day forward, everything [in music] is changed". The film ends on a grim note; as the performance of the Eroica ends, Beethoven looks at his audience and is momentarily unable to hear any natural sounds - an ominous sign of his approaching deafness.

Cast

The main cast were:
  • Ian Hart
    Ian Hart
    Ian Hart is an English stage, television and film actor.-Early life:Hart, the grandson of Irish immigrants, was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He is one of three siblings and was brought up in a Roman Catholic family...

     — Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

  • Tim Pigott-Smith
    Tim Pigott-Smith
    Tim Pigott-Smith is an English film and television actor.-Early life:Pigott-Smith was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, the son of Margaret Muriel and Harry Thomas Pigott-Smith, who was a journalist. He was educated at Wyggeston Boys' School, Leicester, King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, and...

     — Count Dietrichstein
  • Jack Davenport
    Jack Davenport
    Jack Davenport is an English actor, best known for his roles in the television series This Life, Coupling and as James Norrington in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He has also appeared in many other Hollywood films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley...

     — Prince Franz Lobkowitz
  • Fenella Woolgar
    Fenella Woolgar
    Fenella Woolgar is an English actress. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1999 and has since appeared in several film, television and theatre productions. She also works as an audio book narrator and voice over artist...

     — Princess Marie Lobkowitz
  • Claire Skinner
    Claire Skinner
    Claire L. Skinner is an English actress, who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television career.-Biography:Born and brought up in Hemel Hempstead, Skinner, the youngest daughter of a shopkeeper and an Irish-born secretary, was immensely shy as a child...

     — Countess Josephine von Deym
  • Lucy Akhurst
    Lucy Akhurst
    Lucy Akhurst is an English actress, writer and director who has been working mainly in television since the 1990s...

     — Countess Teresa von Brunswick (Josephine's sister)
  • Frank Finlay
    Frank Finlay
    Francis Finlay, CBE is an English stage, film and television actor.-Personal life:Finlay was born in Farnworth, Lancashire, the son of Margaret and Josiah Finlay, a butcher. A devout Catholic, he belongs to the British Catholic Stage Guild. He was educated at St...

     — Joseph Haydn
    Joseph Haydn
    Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

  • Leo Bill
    Leo Bill
    Leo Bill is an English actor, best known for his role as James Brocklebank in 2006 film The Living and the Dead. He is son of the actress Sheila Kelley.-Filmography:-Theatre:...

     — Ferdinand Ries
    Ferdinand Ries
    Ferdinand Ries was a German composer.- Life :Born into a musical family of Bonn, Ries was a friend and pupil of Beethoven who published in 1838 a collection of reminiscences of his teacher, co-written with Franz Wegeler...

  • Peter Hanson — Wranitzky (leader of the orchestra in the film and of Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique)
  • Robert Glenister
    Robert Glenister
    Robert Lewis Glenister is a British actor known for his roles as con man Ash "Three Socks" Morgan in the British TV series Hustle, and Nicholas Blake in the BBC spy drama Spooks.-Career:...

     — Gerhardt (one of the prince’s servants)
  • Anton Lesser
    Anton Lesser
    Anton Lesser is a British actor. He attended Moseley Grammar School and the University of Liverpool before going to RADA in 1977 where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor of his year....

    — Sukowaty (Beethoven's copyist).
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