With some surprise, the people of Cremona who, on the morning of Wednesday, May 14, 1997, passed through Piazza del Duomo, witnessed two farm carts pouring hundreds of kilos of manure onto the cobblestones, which had been covered with dirt the night before.
Strange taste, that of Canadian director François Girard, for the final day of shooting The Red Violin, the story of a "cursed" instrument made in 1681 by violin maker Nicolò Bussotti, which travels through three centuries of history.

It was the day of large-scale scenes, following days of quieter, domestic filming in Via del Cistello, where the home setting for the violin’s origin had been reconstructed. The manure was spread across the entire area in front of the cathedral, under the eyes of astonished onlookers, who watched with a mix of concern and skepticism as the acrid steam from the straw filled the air on what was shaping up to be a hot summer day.

In the small courtyard of the town hall, among wooden benches, tables, fabric drapes, and vegetables, two chicken coops with hens, and the cheerful bustle—full of Roman accents—of the crew at work. First take at 3:00 PM: people smiled and looked in awe at the square, ghostly under the scorching afternoon sun. In the corner near Largo Boccaccino, the extras were sweating heavily, oppressed by thick brown robes and flushed faces covered by olive-green hoods—far from appropriate for the temperature. Two horses, ears pricked and eyes terrified, reared up, barely held back by two grooms dressed like characters from Manzoni’s novels. They moved back and forth between the square and the courtyard, where the marketplace scenes were being shot.

“Mmm… Cecchi is a beast!” muttered the film’s press officer during a break in filming.

Evening fell on a long and exhausting day. On the burning steps of the cathedral, women in austere 17th-century costumes fanned themselves with their skirts. Their faces were flushed. A "bravo" from the crew sprawled out on a chair, fanning himself with a wide-brimmed hat. Off camera and out of costume, the crew crowded around the food prepared by Food Service in Via Janello Torriani. Plump monks rolled up their sleeves and dug in.

He, the protagonist—Carlo Cecchi, playing Nicolò Bussotti—ate alone at a table. Word was, he was impossible to deal with.

Irene Grazioli, aka Anna, the wife, was a beautiful dark-haired woman with large black eyes and no makeup. The classic “girl next door”—but perhaps too beautiful to really be just that. She rushed to the canteen carrying a plastic bag with something she’d bought at a bakery. She immediately began fiddling with a cassette player, looking for a tape. The music started.

“I really love classical music,” she explained. “Even this film we’re shooting feels like music, like a great poem—music in verse, in a way. Playing Anna, the wife, is moving for me, especially after playing the Greek girl in Mediterraneo, a sunny, positive character. I’d already done a dramatic role in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, so I was prepared. And I really like the story: I already knew about the world of violin making, but not this deeply—I’d never gone this far into it. This is a wonderful character—so intense, so lovable, and so full of love. Anna is the real protagonist of the story: she dies in childbirth, but she’s present in every episode, all the way to the end.”

Filming in the square went on late into the night. On Friday, May 16, the set moved to Oxford, where another episode of the story—featuring Greta Scacchi—was filmed. It’s a tale of a troubled passion, full of love and hate, of words left unsaid. A drama of miscommunication, where the violin—that cursed red violin—is always present, carrying its burden of sorrow within its body. The English episode is set at the end of the 19th century and is just one of several flashbacks that make up the plot.

The pairing of love and death—one eternal, the other just a painful interlude—and the eternity of the art of love contrasted with the fleeting nature of human experience. A complex and fascinating theme, narrated by François Girard through the extraordinary journey of a violin of an unusual hue.

In Cremona, in 1681, as he awaits the birth of his firstborn, master violin maker Nicolò Bussotti prepares what is to be his greatest masterpiece. But his wife dies during childbirth, shortly after a fortune teller predicts her fate. The gift prepared to celebrate the event becomes an obsession. Overwhelmed by grief, Bussotti completes the construction of his perfect violin, stained with red varnish in which he has mixed some of his wife’s blood.

The violin then begins its journey across Europe. First to Vienna, in a monastery that also serves as an orphanage, where the instrument is passed from orphan to orphan for over a hundred years—until 1792, when it ends up in the hands of Kaspar Weiss, a heart-stricken child prodigy. The monks contact Georges Poussin, an ambitious French music teacher, who brings Kaspar to the capital to nurture his talent. Kaspar, despite his weak heart, passes an audition before the prince—an effort that proves fatal. He is later buried at the monastery, and the violin with him.

Years later, the cemetery where Kaspar lies is looted, and the violin is found in the hands of gypsies, who pass it down through generations for nearly a hundred years before trading it, in 1893, to Frederick Pope, a decadent, aristocratic, and gifted violinist in Oxford, as payment for land rent.

The violin then becomes the catalyst for a passionate affair between Pope and his lover, writer Victoria Byrd. When Victoria leaves for Russia, Pope turns to opium. Upon her return, she finds him with a gypsy woman, shoots, hits the violin, and storms out. Pope commits suicide. His servant takes the violin to Shanghai and sells it to a pawn shop, where it’s bought by a woman for her daughter, Xiang Pei.

In 1965, Xiang Pei, now a Communist Party official, is reprimanded for defending the Western instrument played by a violinist. But her old music teacher hides the violin in an attic. In the present day, 1997, the violin is rediscovered in the home of the now-deceased Chinese professor, among a vast secret collection of instruments. The Chinese authorities send the instruments to a Montreal auction house to be sold. There, expert Charles Morritz recognizes the violin and, with the help of an employee from the analysis lab, swaps the original with a replica from the Frederick Pope Foundation, risking everything to claim it for himself. The unsuspecting buyer is thrilled—but Morritz is already on his way to the airport, the authentic red violin under his arm.

The story unfolds across many settings, involving numerous producers. Assistant director for Italy was Olivier Gerard, but there was one for each of the co-producing countries: Italy, Austria, and Canada. The production companies were also noteworthy: Sidecar Film and Mikado Film for Italy; Film on Four for England—though the primary input came from overseas, from Eniv Fickman, producer at Toronto’s Rhombus Media. The film’s main distributor was Fineline Feature / New Line International. The location manager in Cremona was Leonardo Caracciolo.

The cast was high-caliber. When it was no longer possible to cast Robert De Niro, originally considered by the American producer, they turned to Samuel L. Jackson, Carlo Cecchi, Irene Grazioli, and Greta Scacchi, among others.

But beyond the actors, the real protagonist was once again the city itself—with its streets, its red-brick walls, its courtyards, and its great square. And of course, its people—with their authentic faces, weathered or rosy, deeply characterized by the makeup artists—and the violin makers, called in to portray the very world from which they came.

For one day, Cremona stepped back in time, knowingly playing pretend. The rest—transforming make-believe into something believable—was left to cinema.

The soundtrack, performed by Joshua Bell with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, won the Oscar for Best Original Score in 2000.