While Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese look to bring the gritty ‘70s music scene to life for HBO, Elton John and True Blood creator Alan Ball have found another era of music history as inspiration for a series.
HBO has put in a pilot order for Virtuoso, a period drama about prodigies studying at the Academy of Musical Excellence in Vienna during the 18th Century.
According to Variety, the main cast is already set, starting with Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game) as Battista. The rest of the cast includes Francois Civil (NBC’s Rosemary’s Baby); Nico Mirallegro (Upstairs Downstairs); and Lindsay Farris.
Writers on the pilot include Ball, Steve Hamilton Shaw and Ball’s True Blood and Six Feet Under collaborator Peter Macdissi, who will also co-star and co-executive produce.
John is on as an executive producer along with David Furnish.
This is the second musical project set up at HBO. As previously noted, Scorsese and Jagger are currently working on a rock ‘n’ roll pilot series set in the 1970s, which was ordered straight to series last month. It will star Bobby Cannavale and is being penned by The Wolf of Wall Street’s Terence Winter with George Mastras.
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