Eroica (2003 film)

Ian Hart starred as the composer, with Tim Pigott-Smith, Anton Lesser, and Frank Finlay along with Jack Davenport and Claire Skinner leading the cast.

The music was played by Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

The performance, and most of the action in the film, takes place at the palace of one of Beethoven's patrons, Prince Franz Lobkowitz.

Midway during the performance, Beethoven tries to persuade his lover, a widow named Josephine von Deym, to marry him, but she refuses because of the unfair laws regarding child custody — she is a member of the nobility, and cannot marry a commoner without losing custody of her children.

As he leaves the performance, Haydn is asked his opinion of the symphony, which he describes as "quite new", and then utters his now-famous and prophetic comment, "From this day forward, everything [in music] is changed".

Beethoven's title page of Symphony No. 3 that shows his erasure of dedication of the work to Napoleon , to be renamed later "Eroica" instead.