Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is conscripted into the intrigue surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach's dying days in the underwhelming latest from Dorfman (after The Suicide Museum). In 1765, when Mozart is nine, he visits London with Johann Christian Bach, son of the famed composer. After giving a performance, he's cornered by John Taylor, a disgraced oculist blamed for the death of the elder Bach in the wake of a surgery to cure the composer's blindness. Taylor pleads with Mozart to arrange a meeting between him and the younger Bach so that Taylor might clear his name, emphasizing that to secure the meeting Mozart need only mention the name of another composer, Handel. Bach refuses, and 13 years later, Mozart is accosted by Taylor's son, Jack, in Paris. Now poor and a compulsive gambler, no longer able to trade on his childhood as a musical prodigy, Mozart is more easily persuaded by Jack, also a doctor, who offers medical attention for Mozart's dying mother in exchange for arranging an audience with Bach. Dorfman breathes considerable life into these historical figures, but the tale itself feels at once inflated and underdeveloped, with minor episodes devoted to Mozart stretched into dozens of pages at the expense of the more intriguing Jack and his quest for vindication. The result is closer to a penny-theater melodrama than a grand symphony. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)