Ken Russell’s controversial take on Tchaikovsky’s life and marriage, made during the height of his career, is a celebration of music that drips with excess
Guided throughout by the swells and dips of Tchaikovsky’s music, Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers examines the tragedies of Tchaikovsky’s life through opulent and fantastic musical sequences running alongside a narrative of the composer’s life between 1875 and 1881. Touching on his disastrous marriage with Antonina Miliukova, his relationship with his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, and his repressed homosexuality, The Music Lovers is anchored by magnetic central performances from Glenda Jackson following her Academy Award for Women in Love, coupled with Richard Chamberlain as a neurotic Tchaikovsky.
Forming part of Ken Russell’s collection of experimental composer biopics, The Music Lovers features plenty of his signature provocation and excess, but ultimately takes a sympathetic lens to Tchaikovsky’s life in a repressive Russian society.
