the Red Violin essays

the Red Violin essays The Red Violin offers some interesting messages about the universality of the language of music. The acting and sets are spectacular, and the actors through the eras do very credible jobs of playing the magical violin. Lastly, the secret of the red violin's color turns out to be an apt symbol for the level of commitment that true musical devotion demands. "The Red Violin" takes its audience on a journey spanning five countries and three centuries. As the violin passes into five principal lives, each tells a story of both hope and greed. Violin maker Nicolo, set aside his best violin as a gift to his unborn child. His wife Anna inquires from her housekeeper and Tarot reader about the child's life. Anna is instructed to choose five cards. As each card in interpreted, we follow the "life" of the violin as it interacts with each person who eventually possesses it. Through the tragedy of Anna and her child's death, we learn the card reading is also for the Red Violincall it Bussotti's other child. Hope turns to grief as the perfect violin is all that remains of everything dear to Nicolo. Painting the violin red, he pours his anger into it. He wanted to leave as his legacy a child of great musical capacity, and through the embodiment of his violin, he did. The Red Violin resurfaces in an Austrian monastery where it chances into the hands of a prodigy of exceptional abilitysix-year-old Kaspar . In 1792, the monks summon Georges, a master of the period, to groom the child. Just as Kaspar is to perform for the patron Georges has arranged young Kaspar's weak and frail heart fails him at his pivotal moment and promise turns to setback in a heart beat. In 1893, in Oxford England, gypsies playing the Red Violin beckon the ear of the flamboyant romantic musician Frederick Pope. Feeling aroused to play, he summons his lover, the novelist Victoria Byrd. Seduced by the travels her novel propels her on, Russia becomes Victoria's next con...