Actor Kelvin Harrison Jr.: 'Mozart stole lines from violinist Joseph Bologne' | Prime

during the reign of Queen Marie Antoinette the Paris Opera was nearly led by a virtuosic renaissance man a master violinist and composer President John Adams called him the most talented man in Europe in horse riding shooting fencing dancing and music he was also black and his story which was erased from history is now being told take a look to make anyone France is changing you could be more influential than you know and Kelvin Harrison Jr from Chevalier this is all right so tell us thank you first of all so much for joining thank you for having me so tell us about Joseph bologna and why I have never heard of him before so Joseph bologna was the son of a slave and a slave owner and his father saw his potential as a violinist even when he was four years old and in actuality in our movie E7 and he brings him to Paris to study at this incredible Fencing Academy at LA busia's Academy in which she becomes the best fencer in Paris at the time and Garners the attention of Marie Antoinette and the king and they Knight him the Chevalier um but Napoleon Bonaparte though unfortunately erased all of his music in his history as he wanted to re-enlist slavery and that is why we have never heard of this guy before and a lot of this movie focuses on his musical prowess you play the violin how are you able to recreate this virtuoso yes it was really hard but luckily my dad is a classical music teacher and um violin was my first instrument I started when I was seven years old and I played for a couple years after Hurricane Katrina the program I was in went away so I never played again after that I started playing piano and trumpet but this was the first time I picked it up in probably over a decade and uh Stephen really Stephen Williams our director gave me no other choice but to to really take on the task so we did five months of training seven days a week six hours a day and that was that was the conservatory style uh training I did a lot of times in a classic music world even today people of color are often dismissed now we're talking about 200 years ago at the height of the classical music and and the height of of society really at the time how was Joseph able to exist and not only exist but but Thrive yes I mean it took a a strong amount of understanding who you are to an extent even though he felt like he was lost in the French society and trying to assimilate but at the same time I think his mother gave him a strong sense of identity and I love that he was able to carry through with him now in the film we see him rediscovering what that love means to him what community means to him but we're talking about someone who who he he had all the gifts and all the determination to get what he wanted he just needed the right um the right people to support him tell it tells racism that took it took out 100 it was racism then took him down but it didn't keep him down you know he still started the first black regimen of the of the Revolution at that time and did many other things still managed to still compose music after um the passing of Marie Antoinette of the beheading of Marie Antoinette um but he did so much and died penniless we learn about Joseph's story his music is still so singular Mozart we find out that Mozart's definitely stole stolen lines from Joseph's music because of how incredible he was but this was a this was a guy who his father told him at a very young age that no man can tear down an excellent Frenchman and then he did just that and I think a lot of people of color get told that at a very young age and you can't stop them when they when they're ready to shoot off since you already lived within the world of of classical music were you surprised that you were not familiar with Joseph and how did you learn about him yeah I was really surprised I didn't know about Joseph um especially with my dad being in the classical space um but the first time I read about him was through Stephanie Robinson's script um I I got the script and I read it and I couldn't believe he was real at first I thought it was a fictional story about a guy and I was like this is a great part for me um but then I started to do the research which was really difficult um because of everything being erased and I I kind of had to go old-fashioned and go to jstor like when I was in college and look up some scholarly journals and look up the citations and then start to find out where others had researched Joseph and how they found these materials and that was that was the beginning of my journey into getting to know who this man was Kelvin Harrison Jr thank you so much for being a part of bringing this story to life I appreciate you talking with us today thank you appreciate it and you can catch Chevalier yes in theaters on Friday April 21st hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to 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Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-98741805, Kelvin Harrison, actor, movie, Chevalier, Joseph Bologne, music, classical music, period piece, violinist, historical, interview, ABCNL, ABC News, Prime

Id: -HkOFrSUCb4

Length: 5min 17sec (317 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023