Niccolò Paganini
Dramatic portrayals

Paganini has been portrayed by a number of actors in film and television productions, including Stewart Granger in the 1946 biographical portrait The Magic Bow, Roxy Roth in A Song to Remember (1945), Klaus Kinski in Kinski Paganini (1989), and David Garrett in The Devil's Violinist (2013).

In the Soviet 1982 miniseries Niccolo Paganini, the musician was portrayed by the Armenian actor Vladimir Msryan. The series focuses on Paganini's relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Another Soviet actor, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, played Paganini's fictionalized arch-rival, an insidious Jesuit official. The information in the series is generally spurious, and it also plays to some of the myths and legends rampant during the musician's lifetime. One memorable scene shows Paganini's adversaries sabotaging his violin before a high-profile performance, causing all strings but one to break during the concert. An undeterred Paganini continues to perform on three, two, and finally on a single string. In actuality, Paganini himself occasionally broke strings during his performances on purpose so he could further display his virtuosity. He did this by carefully filing notches into them to weaken them, so that they would break when in use.

In Don Nigro 's satirical comedy play Paganini (1995), the great violinist seeks vainly for his salvation, claiming that he unknowingly sold his soul to the Devil. "Variation upon variation," he cries at one point, "but which variation leads to salvation and which to damnation? Music is a question for which there is no answer." Paganini is portrayed as having killed three of his lovers and sinking repeatedly into poverty, prison, and drink. Each time he is "rescued" by the Devil, who appears in different guises, returning Paganini's violin so he can continue playing. In the end, Paganini's salvation—administered by a god-like Clockmaker—turns out to be imprisonment in a large bottle where he plays his music for the amusement of the public through all eternity. "Do not pity him, my dear," the Clockmaker tells Antonia, one of Paganini's murdered wives. "He is alone with the answer for which there is no question. The saved and the damned are the same."

The musical Cross Road, premiered 2022 and revived 2024, features Niccolo Paganini as a main character, played by Hiroki Aiba (2022 and 2024), Kenta Mizue (2022), and Kento Kinouchi (2024). The story is about his making a contract with the Devil of Music, Amduscias, played by Akinori Nakagawa in both productions. The musical is by Bun-O Fujisawa, composed by Toshiyuki Muranaka. It was performed at Theater Creation in Tokyo, Japan, with a national tour in 2024.

Another musical about Paganini has been produced in South Korea, called Paganini. It focuses on his son, Achille.
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