Dan Snow's History Hit - Chevalier: France's Revolutionary Maestro

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges is perhaps the most accomplished classical musician that you've never heard of. A composer, soldier and champion fencer, this episode traces his life from the French colony of Guadeloupe to the concert halls of Paris and the battlefields of the French Revolution.So how did a man of mixed heritage overcome the prejudices of the day? And what was the significance of his achievements at the time? Dan is joined by Stephen Williams, director of the acclaimed 2023 biographical drama Chevalier, to talk about his life and the importance of remembering it.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. John Adams, the man that would become the second president of the United States, described him as the most accomplished man in Europe. Apart from his many other talents, he could throw a coin in the air and hit it with a shot from his pistol. He was a musician, he was a composer, he was a society darling, he was a musical teacher and intimate of Marie Antoinette, and he was mixed race. He was a man of colour. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologna, was born in Guadeloupe in 1745. His father was a married, wealthy planter, a member of the island elite.

His mother was an enslaved teenage girl. He was blessed with extraordinary talents and went on to have a very remarkable life. A life that is now told in the eponymous film Chevalier, directed by Stephen Williams. It has been released in US, Canada and here in the UK, and I thought it was a great chance to catch up with Stephen Williams. It has been released in US, Canada, and here in the UK, and I thought it was a great chance to catch up with Stephen Williams, who is himself Canadian, born in the Caribbean, educated in Europe, to talk about The Chevalier, the subject of his movie.

Stephen Williams has got a long and illustrious career in show business. He was an executive producer of Lost, you'll remember the TV show that everyone used to watch back in the day, and he's directed many movies since. This is the story of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. This baby, Joseph Bologna, was born into a very mixed status, mixed ethnicity relationship. Can you tell me more about what we know about the circumstances of his birth, his conception, I guess? What kind of relationship was that that gave birth to him? Yeah. I mean, Joseph Bologna was born on the island of Guadalupe. He was the son of a 16-year-old

enslaved woman called Nanon and George Bologna, who owned the plantation on which Nanon worked and lived and where Joseph was born. So yeah, strange, kind of not entirely sad to say, atypical kind of scenario that unfolded on plantations across the West between slave owner and enslaved. And Joseph was the progeny of one of those liaisons. I mean, we don't know if it's consensual, whether it was a relationship. We don't know. This was not uncommon in this period. Slave owners forcing themselves on the people that they literally owned. Yeah, yeah. I mean, from my perspective, it's by definition not a consensual relationship,

insofar as Nanon was the property of George and therefore, just in terms of sheer power dynamics alone, would not have been able to have given consent to any kind of sexual congress or any relationship that would have given rise to the birth of her son. So yeah, highly kind of challenging and problematic origins for Joseph Bologna. What is so extraordinary about young people like Joseph is oftentimes their father would be prepared to, despite their paternity, just own them, work them as enslaved people, right? That didn't necessarily mean they were going to achieve a higher status or have better prospects. better prospects. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons that I was drawn to making a film about Joseph Bologna, aka Chevalier, is that not much is known about this person who went on to become one of the most accomplished men in Europe in mid 1700s France. But from the little that we

have been able to glean and the little that has been written and that exists about him, it does appear as if George, his father, gave him somewhat preferential treatment and in fact, you know, noticed and encouraged Joseph's musical prowess and musical talent very early on and in part was one of the reasons and the factors behind George taking Joseph to Paris and enrolling him in a very exclusive academy run by a man called Le Boisier, whose job it was to engender in the student body that he had all the skills that were requisite for a gentleman of the time. So music, fencing, equestrian sports, marksmanship, and so on.

So George, he was married and had a family of his own. So whether George, Joseph's father's motivation in taking Joseph to France was in order to help his son foster and develop his skills as a violinist, or whether it was self-serving and was a way of George removing this kind of evidence of his illicit relationship with Nanon from his domestic environment, or whether it was a combination of the two, we don't know. We're left to speculate. Because it is a remarkable journey that he takes at age eight, I think you say, he goes to France. Somewhere around there, yeah. And his father receives like an elevated

position at court, right? And he takes him with him. Well, his father takes him to France and has to go back to manage the plantation. And Joseph is enrolled in this boarding academy, Lavoisier's Academy, and very quickly his musical prowess. And at that period in his life, even more importantly, his prowess as a champion fencer, he becomes the most famous and accomplished fencer in all of Europe by the time he's like 16, 17. And that brings him to the attention of the king and Marie Antoinette, the queen, and he is made a Chevalier. Well, I'm going to ask you what a Chevalier is in a second. But

firstly, let's talk about the fact he was of mixed race. Here in the UK, I'm sure it's happening there as well. Whether it's period dramas depicting people of mixed race or school textbooks, there is an outcry because people say traditionally we're overwhelmingly a white society. What is the reality, do you think, of 18th century Paris? I mean, would it have been normal to see people of color in a crowd? And certainly amongst the elite, how would that have worked? Yeah, I mean, it definitely was not normal. And yet, my understanding is that in France at the time, to compare it to America, for example, so both countries engaged in the socioeconomic practice of slavery, right, and plantation

economies. But the big difference is that in America, those plantations existed on American soil, whereas slavery itself was not actually legal in France proper, but was legal in French colonies. And so there was this kind of one step removed relationship with the incredibly horrific practice of enslavement. And that, in turn, meant that France at the time at least prided itself on being a more kind of open, accepting and fluid society. Or still being a code noir, a body of rules around what a person of color could do and who

they could marry, for example, and so on. You mentioned he became a chevalier. What is that? A chevalier is like a knight, essentially. He's the equivalent of a knight. a knight, essentially. He's the equivalent of a knight. So he was given a dong, as we say here in the UK, a royal seal of approval. So he made a huge impression on Paris. Yeah, absolutely. He was, in addition to being this champion fencer and marksman and equestrian, he was favored by many of the women of French society at the time. He was favored by court. He taught Marie Antoinette harpsichord, and they became incredibly close as a result of that. And of course, Joseph was at the same time, this virtuosic violinist. He was a composer of concertos, opera, a conductor. He was essentially a rock star. He was like Prince or Jimi Hendrix of his time.

And he got involved in politics. Everyone got involved in politics in 1789. French Revolution breaks out. What position does he take? So what's really kind of fascinating is at the beginning of his entree into French society, he and Marie Antoinette become thick as thieves. They're super close. They're great friends.

And he moves with tremendous ease in the upper echelons of French society. And something happens between that time period and 1789, when the French Revolution breaks out, and Joseph then winds up being the leader of a thousand-man, all-Black battalion in opposition to the monarchy in the Revolutionary War. So he goes from being a friend and consort of the queen to bearing arms against her and the monarchy. And so there is something that really kind of transformative that happens in terms of his appraisal of his own place in society and his connection to people like him who continued to toil on plantations across the rest of French holdings and French colonies. You end up with lots of curious contortions

in this period, don't you? I mean, presumably it's the revolutionary spirit of emancipation was an influence on him at this point. Absolutely. I mean, a lot of which was afoot in England, actually, at the time. The abolitionist movement was gaining great momentum in England, and Joseph was definitely influenced by many of the abolitionist thinkers in England during that time period. And I think it was in 1794, the French Republic did indeed outlaw slavery in its colonies. So I wonder if that was something that drove him on. But in fact, he ended up on the wrong side of the whole thing, as so many people did.

He ended up in prison, didn't he? And was probably lucky to escape the guillotine during the terror. Yeah. I mean, once the French Revolution gathered steam, it kind of became extreme at a certain point. And Robespierre, who was the main kind of architect at that period of the revolution, got to a place where even though Joseph had fought on the side of the revolutionaries to unseat the monarchy, he nonetheless had this history of having been close with Marie Antoinette and

close with the monarchy prior to the revolution. And that raised a cloud of suspicion in Robespierre and his followers' minds. And Joseph was imprisoned and was in fact on his way to being guillotined himself and was spared at the 11th hour, as it were. You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about the Chevalier de Saint-Georges more after this. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to solve the biggest mysteries of the medieval age. So many of these travellers who went out looking for Presta John,

what did they think they were hearing? Using science to identify our buried ancestors. Genetic signatures found in present day Ashkenazi Jewish populations were shared by the genetic ancestries we found in these individuals. And reveal the answers to centuries-old riddles. I stand up straight in a bed, I'm hairy at my base and I make the ladies cry. The solution is an onion. I'm Matt Lewis and every Tuesday and Friday you can join me to travel the medieval world in search of the stories you haven't heard and to get under the skins of the ones you have. Gone Medieval from History Hit, twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest

groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Once he was spared, why is he not someone that we hear about for the rest of this extraordinary period of French and European history alongside Napoleon and others? What happens to him? Yeah, well, that's a $64 million question, right? So first of all, Joseph dies unmarried, childless at age 53. And with much of his music subsequently either sidelined, destroyed, abandoned, erased, neglected. So as we sit here in the present day, there's probably about a third of his musical output that still exists and that can be excavated and heard and played and listened to and explored and examined.

But much of it was destroyed at the time of his death. kind of efforts at erasure, probably promulgated by Napoleon, who, by the way, has the dubious distinction of reinstating slavery in 1802 in the French colonies. And consequently, France has the singular record of being the only European country to reinstate slavery after it had been abolished. And so perhaps as part of that effort and that initiative, Joseph and his popularity were inconvenient for Napoleon. And it is entirely possible that with that understanding, Joseph and his popularity were inconvenient for Napoleon. And it is entirely possible that with that understanding, much of Joseph's life story and output in terms of music was destroyed. Just do the big question. This man, he died, as you say, at 53 years old, 1799. His story, I think, forgotten by so many of us. Why did you choose this as the subject? What was about

this period that you needed to get on the big screen? Well, I got sent the script by Searchlight Pictures. And five pages in, I was astonished that someone as accomplished as Joseph Bologna, the American president at the time, John Adams referred to him as the most accomplished man in Europe. I was amazed that I'd never heard of him. So I started a kind of deep dive to try and educate myself and to learn as much as I could about not only Joseph Bologna, but also the times in which he lived. And the more I did that was the more I kind of went, wow, there is a lot of commonality between the social ferment of pre-revolutionary France and our present moment. It felt as if there was something incredibly contemporary about the events that were surrounding Joseph and Joseph's

life, and that would feel recognizable to a modern audience. So there was that. And then there was just on a personal level, you know, as I mentioned, Joseph was born in Guadalupe, a Caribbean island and made his way to Europe when he was roughly 10 years old. I was born in another Caribbean island, Jamaica, and made my way to England at about the same age, went to high school and university in England and became incredibly accomplished. Nowhere near as accomplished as Mr. Bologna, but I've done my best. And so just that kind of experience of being an outsider and feeling displaced and then feeling the need to exert a certain kind of ambition as a means of trying to put those disparate pieces of your life experience into some kind of discernible order. That journey was something I recognized and felt

connected to and with. And so for all those reasons, it felt like a story that I just was compelled to bring to the screen. I'm not asking you to compare yourself, of course, to this man. I'm struck that you both exercise that ambition through the creative arts. Is there something you feel a kinship with him there and some empathy? Absolutely. The journey of the artist and the explorations that are pursuant to that life path. Absolutely. That desire and compulsion to express yourself as a means of, I guess, kind of figuring out your place in society and navigating your way through that society, and then your understanding of the limitations around that endeavor. Joseph's acceptance in French society was very, very conditional. There came a moment

when the rubber hit the road, and people made certain choices and decisions around him based on his race and his ethnicity. And I think that that's always part of the journey of people like Joseph and myself. Do you think it's easier in creative? I mean, it's less hierarchical, is it, I guess, than the army, the church, maybe than a provincial merchant trading community? I mean, is it a place that given his talent, he was maybe able to chart an unconventional path? able to chart an unconventional path? It's a more relaxed dress code for sure than being in the church or the army. That's a definite allure for sure. I think he just followed his muse. I think he had this talent and that led him on the path that he took. I don't know that he had much choice, really. I think sometimes

it works in the other direction. If you have an ability or a facility or a calling, for want of a better word, then there's a reason that word exists, calling. You answer that call, and I think he did that. I have to ask all the dramatists that come on this podcast. Us history geeks will get very upset and worried when you guys change history around and what is your relationship with history? We know you're artists. That's your prerogative. You have to do these things because real life sometimes isn't neat enough for a 90 minute picture, right? But what about you? How do you feel about the facts versus the story? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. First off, we're not making a documentary and we're not making a Wikipedia page.

The Wikipedia page exists and I urge people to peruse it as the beginning of their journey into informing themselves about Joseph. So that's the first thing. And then the hardest aspect of this movie, in a way, was kind of balancing the tonal elements of the contemporary vibe of trying to kind of place the

viewer in a as subjective a relationship to Joseph and his journey through the movie as possible creating a sense of immediacy as opposed to kind of some masterpiece theater you're looking through at some distanced remove at these events I wanted the audience to feel immersed in these events at the same time as balancing that with honoring the time period in which these events took place. And in that enterprise, I was mostly guided by a quote from Tom Stoppard, which I subscribe to, which basically goes as follows. Facts are facts. The truth is something else entirely and is a product of the imagination. So we tried to be as truthful as possible in our depiction of Joseph while deliberately and consciously not necessarily being devout adherents to facts in all cases.

Truthful, yes. Factual, not necessarily. Is it important that we do reach back? We remember, we create stories and films and movies about these Caribbean figures. Because there is a dominant narrative of the Caribbean. It doesn't involve extraordinarily talented French ancien regime composers, right? So why is it so important to do this? composers, right? So why is it so important to do this? Well, I mean, look, first and foremost, I wanted to make a piece of entertainment. I wanted to make a film that people could see and have fun at the cinema watching. Then secondarily, it would be great if in that pursuit, people also came away learning something about someone that they potentially didn't know much about before or anything but i kind of look at the question you asked in a fairly

sort of simple and hopefully straightforward way which is that we are all of us connected all of us at this eight billion strong family of humanity. We're all connected and we all share a collective human story. And I think it's really important that that human story be as balanced and fully fleshed out as possible in order to give us all the greatest degree of perspective about that collective narrative that we share. And I also think that if in that pursuit, we end up strengthening the empathy muscle. And that's a really good thing for us to kind of see our own lives and our own struggles reflected in people who don't necessarily look like us, because that strength is the understanding that there's a commonality

that unites us all in our human story. Thank you so much, Stephen, for coming on and doing a few lifts of my empathy muscle. The movie is called Chevalier? It is indeed. It's called Chevalier. It's out now in the US and the UK. So go and check it out, everybody. Thank you very much indeed. Awesome. Thank you so much.