Fiction
Possibly the first venture into fictional treatments of Chopin's life was a fanciful operatic version of some of its events. This opera, titled Chopin, was written by Giacomo Orefice and produced in Milan in 1901. Orefice incorporated Chopin's music, arranged as arias; the operatic arrangements have been described as "coarse".
Chopin's life and his relations with George Sand have been fictionalized in film. The 1945 biopic A Song to Remember earned Cornel Wilde an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his portrayal of the composer. Other film treatments have included: La Valse de l'adieu (France, 1928) by Henry Roussel, with Pierre Blanchar as Chopin and the collaboration of musicologist Édouard Ganche (fr) as special historical advisor; Impromptu (1991), starring Hugh Grant as Chopin; La note bleue (1991); and Chopin: Desire for Love (2002). Another cinema reference to Chopin occurs in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata; the difference in interpreting Chopin's Prelude No. 2 in A minor between pianist Charlotte Andergast and her daughter Eva constitutes a major scene.
Kate Beaton did a series of comics starring Chopin and Liszt.
The PS3 / Xbox 360 role-playing game Eternal Sonata takes place in the mind of Chopin in the hours before his death and features Chopin as a playable character, with regular breaks for presentations of his own music.
Read more about this topic: Frédéric Chopin
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A fiction about soft or easy deaths ... is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)