Stewart Granger had two tutors train him on posture, stance and playing the violin. The music was recorded by American-born Jewish virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin. He took six weeks and used two violins to create the masterful music heard in the film.
Nicolo Paganini gave a gift of 20,000 francs to French composer Hector Berlioz who was struggling at the time. The money was a fee for commissioning "Harold in Italy," a symphony for viola and orchestra, but Paganini rejected it because the viola part wasn't prominent enough for him. Nonetheless, Paganini fell at his feet and said that Berlioz was destined to follow in Beethoven's footsteps. Berlioz, in turn, dedicated his next work to Paganini - the choral symphony, "Romeo et Juliette."
After his tour of England and Scotland, Paganini settled in Paris in 1833. He invested in the Casino Paganini and stopped performing in 1834. The casino failed and he sold all of his instruments to pay off his debts.
In 1827, Pope Leo XII knighted Paganini with the Order of the Golden Spur. He was in the company of other great artists of the past. Among them are painters Raphael (1483-1520) and Titian (1490-1576), sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799) and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), the latter at age 14.
Paganini's works inspired a number of great composers after him, notably Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninoff and Robert Schumann.
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