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Rock on, Shostakovich, Handel, Ravel: lives of great composers hit the screens

Torment, rebellion and tragedy are major themes as a rash of new biopics highlight the achievements and challenges of the musically gifted

Hampton, who is rehearsing his latest play, Visit From An Unknown Woman, an adaptation of a Stefan Zweig short story, which will have its English-language premiere at the Hampstead Theatre in north London later this month added: “[Shostakovich] was the adored wunderkind of Russia but, after the act II interval of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – which had been a huge success – he looked up at the box and Stalin and the politburo had not come back. While Sky is adapting Peter Shaf­fer’s award-winning stage play Ama­deus into a series starring Will Sharpe as Mozart and Paul Bettany as his fierce rival Salieri, US film-maker Solomon J LeFlore is developing a major movie about their contemporary, Joseph Bologne, who was born into slavery and went on to become a violin virtuoso and composer. The son of a plantation owner and a teenage Senegalese enslaved woman, Bologne became a composer in Marie Antoinette’s court, wrote symphonies, concertos and string quartets – many lost during the French Revolution – and was described by the former US president John Adams as “the most accomplished man in Europe”.

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