BBC films Beethoven drama. (Classical news).

Beethoven's Third Symphony, known to history as the Eroica, has been chosen as the subject for a film drama based on events surrounding the work's first run through at a private rehearsal in Vienna on 9 June 1804 in Prince Lobkowitz's Viennese palace. The programme, which includes a complete performance of the work given by the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and its conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, is set for broadcast on BBC Two later this year to mark the bicentenary of the Eroica's completion.

Screenwriter Nick Dear's script blends aspects of the symphony's composition, not least its original dedication to Napoleon and rededication to Lobkowitz, with genuine details from Beethoven's biography and a fair deal of speculation about the nature of his relationship with the Brunsvik sisters. Eroica stars lan Hart as Beethoven, Jack Davenport as Prince Lobkowitz, Tim Piggott-Smith as Count Dietrichstein, Anton Lesser as Sukowaty and Claire Skinner and Lucy Akhurst as the Brunsvik sisters.

"Eroica unfolds over just a few hours on 9 June 1804," says Dear. "It ...