Music Lovers, The (1971) – Nostalgia Central

The Music Lovers follows the doomed heterosexual attempts by famed 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) as he rises through the musical world by turning his back on his homosexuality and taking part in a sham of a marriage.

After potentially outing himself to the veteran composers of Russia’s famed Mighty Five (Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin), Tchaikovsky chooses his wife from a series of saucy love letters that she has written to him without ever meeting him.

In his mind, because she only knows his music, that is all that she needs to love him.

But Nina Milyukova (an amazing Glenda Jackson) needs more than his music. The mentally ill woman suffers from nymphomania and needs sex to feel loved.

There is a magnificent scene on their honeymoon where Tchaikovsky specifically gets Nina very drunk on a train so that he won’t need to have sex, but she still tries.

She passes out naked on the floor of their train car, and the bumps of the tracks make her body sway back and forth violently, and Tchaikovsky looks in horror at her vulnerable body.

Their marriage, of course, proves to be disastrous, and Pyotr flees from his wife, isolating himself in the countryside to compose music for Madame Von Meck (Polish-born actress Izabella Telezynska), a wealthy aristocrat and widow who becomes his patroness for the next 13 years, although they never meet.

But Tchaikovsky’s past comes back to haunt him several times before the film’s manic and grotesque conclusion.

Ken Russe’l’s film is about the power of music, but it’s also about the destructiveness of withholding sex – from oneself and from others. There is humiliation in both turning down someone for sex and in being turned down.

Through his rejection of Nina, Tchaikovsky helps to end her life in an insane asylum, servicing her fellow inmates.

Max Adrian and Christopher Gable appear as Nikolai Rubinstein, Head of the Moscow Conservatoire, and Anton Chiluvsky, the decadent aristocrat whose intimacy with Tchaikovsky leads to remorse and betrayal.  Chiluvsky never actually existed but serves as a composite of Tchaikovsky’s male lovers over the years.

Kenneth Colley plays Modeste, Tchaikovsky’s weak, insidious brother, and Sabina Maydelle is his sister, Sasha, the respectable and loving alter ego. Maureen Pryor handles the role of Nina’s leech-like mother superbly – an effusive gossip who finally reveals herself as an opportunist ruthless enough to exploit her own daughter’s sufferings.

The screenplay by Melvyn Bragg was based on Beloved Friend, a collection of Tchaikovsky’s personal correspondence.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Richard Chamberlain
Antonina (Nina) Milyukova/Tchaikovsky
Glenda Jackson
Nikolai Rubinstein
Max Adrian
Anton Chiluvsky
Christopher Gable
Modeste Tchaikovsky
Kenneth Colley
Madame Von Meck
Izabella Telezynska
Nina’s Mother
Maureen Pryor
Aleksandra (Sasha) Davydova
Sabina Maydelle
Davidov
Andrew Faulds
Alexei
Bruce Robinson
Lieutenant
Ben Aris
Koyola
Xavier Russell
Vladimir
Dennis Myers
Anatole
John Myers
Olga Bredska
Joanne Brown
Dmitri Shubelov
Alexei Jawdokimov
Von Meck child
Alex Russell
Doctor
Clive Cazes
Prince Balukin
Graham Armitage
Tchaikovsky’s Mother
Consuela Chapman
Bobyek
James Russell
Tatiana
Victoria Russell
Young Tchaikovsky
Alex Brewer

Director
Ken Russell

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