The "Love Theme" ballet duet, which forms the pivotal core of the film, was choreographed especially for Love Song by the internationally renowned dancer and choreographer Yat-Sen Chang, former principal dancer of London's world-famous English National Ballet. The film's dance director was Corinna Chute. After graduating from the Royal Ballet School she performed with ballet, jazz and contemporary companies in Italy and Holland. Later, following her role as European Representative of the Cuban National Ballet School's international ballet courses "CUBALLET", she became Artistic Director of the celebrated Espinosa Chute Centre in the historic town of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, just outside London, where Love Song received its glittering big-screen premiere on 16 February 2014 in front of cast and crew, friends and family and other invited guests. The Love Song pas de deux featuring Tchaikovsky and Zak was given its world stage premiere on 17 August by the Espinosa Dance Project company at the Espinosa Chute Centre Theatre in Berkhamsted. The ballet, called Tchaikovsky's "Love Theme", was part of a mixed-bill programme. It was repeated on 18 August 2013. Starring in the two theatre performances, as in the film itself, was the acclaimed Serbian National Ballet soloist Lloyd Petchey as Tchaikovsky with the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts' much-in-demand Rowen Shone as Eduard Zak. The Lighting Designer for Love Song's two crucial sequences with ballet dancers was the renowned Doz Brook, the man behind the lighting for many stage productions in London's West End.
DÉSIRÉE ARTÔT became a singing teacher after her retirement and died in Paris 14 years after the death of Tchaikovsky. ANTONINA MILYUKOVA, who outlived Tchaikovsky by 24 years - spending the last 20 of them in an insane asylum - never stopped loving her husband. NADEZHDA VON MECK, who supported Tchaikovsky financially for 13 years, died of heart-break barely two months after the composer's death. ALEXEI SOFRONOV inherited much of Tchaikovsky's wealth and, after buying the house at Klin, helped to found the Tchaikovsky memorial museum which exists to this day. TSAR ALEXANDER III awarded Tchaikovsky a lifetime pension, paid the costs of the composer's epic funeral, and died 11 months later. TCHAIKOVSKY, through the sale and performance of his music on disc, television and the stage, in films and the concert hall, became the world's most popular and biggest-selling composer. EDUARD ZAK'S family history, following his suicide, remains a mystery. But as the inspiration behind one of the most famous love themes ever written, Eduard's legacy will endure for as long as romance inflames the human spirit.
Ian Woodward was privileged to know - for five years before her death in 1985 - Galina von Meck, the great-grandniece of Tchaikovsky and the granddaughter of his patron Nadezhda von Meck. She explained how she was aged two when Tchaikovsky held her in his arms. The filmmaker was also friends for many years with the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin, whose father, Nikolai Tcherepnin (pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and acquaintance of Tchaikovsky) was also a composer and music director of Diaghilev's legendary Ballets Russes. Ian Woodward listened, enthralled, at one of Alexander Tcherepnin's famous soirées, as Alexander told him stories about Tchaikovsky told to him by his father Nicholas. (It was famously at one these soirées that Ian Woodward, on being introduced to a sculptor named Oleg Prokofiev, asked "Any relation to the composer of the ballet Romeo and Juliet?" Oleg replied: "Yes, he was my dad!") Much of what the film-maker learned from Galina von Meck and Alexander Tcherepnin - not least that which is pertinent to the film's revelations - appears in Love Song.
Love Song is based on extensive original research by the film-maker which he believes reveals for the first time on film the real story behind the creation of Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet which gave the world one of the most famous love themes ever written. The facts are presented in biopic form. All the characters depicted in the film actually existed, although some moments have been fictionalised to fill-in gaps where details are scant or non-existent. The scenarist therefore set himself a rule at the outset which he has not knowingly broken: there is nothing in the film which could not have happened. The intention has been to weave together the known facts and the scenarist's imagination, the latter filling in the gaps left by the former. The result is Love Song: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tchaikovsky.
In 1869, while employed as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky wrote Romeo and Juliet which he based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. Although described by the composer as a Fantasy Overture, the overall design is that of a symphonic poem. It is based on three main strands of the Shakespeare story. The first strand represents the saintly Friar Laurence. This is followed by the warring Capulets and Montagues. Finally, in the third strand, is the "love theme" representing two lovers. The music for this episode is passionate and yearning but always with an underlying current of anxiety. It is the most famous and well-loved section of the piece and shows how the protagonists' forbidden love affair grows against all odds, even after death.