screen revival of Josef Mysliveček, prolific composer and mentor of Mozart, who has fallen into oblivion

Admired by the young Mozart, Josef Mysliveček, originally from Bohemia, composed many operas and was for one or two decades the mascot of the greatest European stages in the 18th century. Il Boemo pays tribute to this forgotten genius musician. The film is released in theaters in France on the day of the music festival, June 21, 2023.

Josef Mysliveček was born in Prague in 1737, into a rather wealthy family of millers. The young boy loves music but his father expects him to embrace the same profession as him. Josef therefore awaits his death to leave to his twin brother the care of keeping the family business alive and he leaves to try his luck in music, his passion. In Prague he studied the violin and composition and wrote his first symphonies.

Operas and licentiousness

After studying with the organist and composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti (1706-1766) in Venice, the young musician struggled to make a living from his music for several years, until an affair with a noble Venetian courtesan opened up his doors of the closed circles of the musical production of the time, very linked to the power. Presented to Amadori, the impresario of the San Carlo theater in Naples, he was commissioned to perform an opera for the birthday of the young King Ferninand IV.

With the fiery singer Caterina Gabrielli (1730-1796), a star of the time, in the title role, her creation was a triumph. The career of the one now nicknamed “Il Boemo” is launched. Courts all over Europe are snapping it up. The composer meets the young Mozart, who admires him and questions him about his compositions. He would have, it is said, greatly influenced the virtuoso. Il Boemo collects successes, travels and dangerous liaisons, which lead to him contracting a nasty syphilis. His career declines. He died in Rome in misery, carried away by illness.

Make way for music

This biopic gives the opportunity to discover and hear the marvelous compositions of this forgotten musician, to which the film, very long, leaves a good place. Especially since all the roles of the singers are interpreted by professionals, except the tempestuous Gabrielli, to whom the soprano Simona Saturova lent her voice. We can thus hear Raffaella Milanesi, Emöke Barath, Giulia Semenzato, Krystian Adam, and even Philippe Jaroussky in a brief appearance… The little Mozart is also interpreted by a virtuoso in real life, the young German pianist Philip Amadeus Hahn.

The film sheds light on the functioning of the musical production of the 18^e century, a system that makes and breaks careers without qualms, with musicians with a precarious status, where creation depends not on a value but on the goodwill of the powerful. We can also see the unceremonious atmosphere of the shows, where life goes on, where we eat, talk, or even more if you like, without any embarrassment during the performances, where applause and untimely boos follow one another in an atmosphere that recalls that of today’s stadiums.

Between romance and social chronicle

Built around a romantic intrigue between Il Boemo and a countess mistreated by her jealous husband, the film plunges without taboos into the libertine atmosphere of the time, where the woman, in fine, remains confined to the role of wife or whore, no in-between, and where freedom, lightness but also the violence of a society still very marked by relations of domination coexist.

Decors and neat costumes, actors at the height, we nevertheless remain a little unsatisfied. Very centered on licentiousness and digging less into the musical aspect of the subject, the film reduces, for example, the evocation of the relationship between Il Boemo and Mozart to a single scene, very telling certainly, but posed there as a parenthesis that we would like to see it reopen later. The film would have gained in clarity with a more assertive bias, less centered on the dissolute life of the musician, and a more daring staging.

Why did Il Boemo and his works (nearly 30 operas, dozens of symphonies and two oratorios unjustly attributed to Mozart) fall into oblivion? The dazzling radiance of the composer of The Magic Flute can he alone explain the erasure of this great musician? The question still remains.

The sheet

Gender : Biopic, Historical, Romance
Director: Petr Vaclav
Actors : Vojtech Dyk, Barbara Ronchi, Elena Radonicich
Country : Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia
Duration : 02:22
Exit : June 21, 2023
Distributer : Nour Films

Synopsis : 1764. In a libertine Venice, the musician and composer Josef Myslivecek, nicknamed “Il Boemo”, does not manage to break through despite his talent. His affair with a woman from the court allows him to reach his dream and compose an opera. From then on his fame grew, but how far would he go? The life, work and escapades of a forgotten genius composer whom the young Mozart admired.