Paganini's Daemon: A Most Enduring Legend

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Filmmaker Christopher Nupen about the film:
"Niccolo Paganini created the most elaborate and enduring legend of all instrumental soloists in the entire history of Western classical music but, as so often with legends, the excitement and the chatter obscured the true figure of both the man and the artist.
In this film, Christopher Nupen looks at the legend and the strange man who created it all with his dazzling combination of technical brilliance, supreme showmanship, Italian melody and unbridled manipulative skill - a man whose extraordinary personality unsettled even the most sophisticated and educated minds and provoked wildly contradictory opinions.
This film presents Paganini's music and combines it with extracts from Paganini's letters and quotations from both his admirers and his many detractors. While being hailed as the greatest performing musician of his time, he was denounced again and again by knowledgeable critics as a charlatan in league with the devil and an avaricious man with scant respect for those who responded, so enthusiastically, to his unforgettable gift and contributed so readily to his vast personal fortune.
Paganini exploited all of it and used the legends to make himself not only the most talked about performer of his time, but also the wealthiest by a long, long way. In time this provoked envy and resentment and, finally, a pitiable isolation.
And yet, through all of it, he served his daemon with commitment and dedication, and - despite enduring ill health - drove himself forward with an energy that astonished all who came into contact with him - as only a man with an unshakeable faith in his destiny could possibly do. Along the way, he wrote a great range of original and memorable music, changed violin playing decisively and created the age of the romantic virtuoso. By the end, however, his unbending quest for gold and for glory had robbed him slowly of almost everything else.
Paganini died in Nice on the 27th May 1840 in the company of his only son Achilles, who had become his constant companion, his aide and translator and his greatest solace in his isolation and illness. He was 57 years old.
This film is an attempt to present a true and honest picture of the man and the musician."

An Allegro Film by Christopher Nupen