It has taken more than 200 years for the reputation of composer Joseph Bologne to be restored, during which time he was dubbed the “Black Mozart”. Jansson J. Antmann explores his only surviving opera with director Bruce A. Lemon Jr. and conductor Craig Trompeter, while a new biopic is about to hit our screens.

A portrait of Joseph Bologne
A portrait of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges by Mather Brown, 1788. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Violin virtuoso, champion swordsman and lover, Joseph Bologne was an incredibly gifted composer who might just as easily have stepped out of an 18th-century opera.

Bill Barclay’s episodic four-hander, The Chevalier, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2018 and performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra this March, portrays him as a...