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The Music Lovers
Original Movie Poster
Directed by	Ken Russell
Produced by	Exective Producer: Roy Baird Producer: Ken Russell
Written by	Novel: Catherine Drinker Bowen Screenplay: Melvyn Bragg
Starring	Richard Chamberlain Glenda Jackson Christopher Gable Max Adrian Isabella Telezynska Maureen Pryor Andrew Faulds
Music by	Original Music: André Previn Non Original Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Cinematography	Douglas Slocombe
Editing by	Michael Bradsell
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	December, 1970 January 24, 1971
Running time	122 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£1,600,000 $2,856,525
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The Music Lovers is a 1970 biopic of the 19th century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as conceived by maverick director Ken Russell.

The film was one of a series of Russell's films delineating the lives of classical composers from an often idiosyncratic standpoint. Other notable ones include: Elgar (1962, TV), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975).

Focusing on Tchaikovsky's reputed homosexuality, it tells the story of his musical life refracted through his childhood memories of the violent death of his mother, under treatment for cholera by quack physicians, and through his frustrated marriage to Antonina Milyukova. The film employs scenes of cruelty, violence and sexuality in a way that is simultaneously graphic, camp and arch, in order to represent Tchaikovsky's supposed mental anguish and instability. Critical reception in the 1970s was cool. The film has been much criticised as an inaccurate depiction of the life of the composer, but remains an exhilarating fantasia and contains many fine sequences.

Remarkably, actor Andrew Faulds had been a Labour Member of Parliament in the UK since 1966 and Glenda Jackson went on to become a Labour MP in 1992.

The young Tchaikovsky (Chamberlain) sees his mother die horribly, being forcibly immersed in scalding water as a supposed cure for cholera. He is haunted by the scene throughout his musical career. Despite his difficulty in establishing his musical reputation, Madame Nadezhda von Meck (Telezynka) becomes his patron. He weds Antonina Milyukova (Jackson) but is unable to consummate the marriage because of his homosexuality. The dynamics of his life lead to deteriorating mental health and the loss of von Meck's patronage. He dies of cholera after deliberately drinking contaminated water.