# Tchaikovsky – Eugene Onegin



## ClassicalMusicLover1 (May 2, 2017)

I'll dedicate the next few musical notes to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I have always had a difficult relationship with his music. My parents loved his first piano concerto, and I've listened to it a few thousand times over the years (I love it, too). At the same time, I was forced to listen to his music in school in Russia. Anytime I am forced into something I naturally start resenting it. This applies to Russian literature as well: my teachers turned Russian literature into Mark Twain's definition of a "classic ": a book that people praise and don't read. I am still trying to get back into Russian literature, but Tchaikovsky's incredible music has overcome my implanted childhood resentment to it, though it took time.

In the next few musical notes I'll share Tchaikovsky's music and what I've learned about him. There are several theories as to why Tchaikovsky died at age 53. The theory I heard when I was a child in Russia was that he died from cholera - probably from drinking contaminated water. However, there is another theory about his death: that he committed suicide. Tchaikovsky was a Russian national treasure, a symbol of Russian greatness, something the propaganda machine could point at and say, "Materialistic Americans have their poisonous hamburgers (and a chicken in every pot, and toilet paper, and…), but we got art." This is also why the propaganda machine would censor a little-known fact about its national hero: Tchaikovsky was gay.

Today we see headlines about Putin's homophobia, but as much as it's convenient to blame it on Putin, it is not him but his country (admittedly, a very general statement). I did not learn of the existence of gay people until I was 17, and what I was told about them by my friends and the media was not much different from what the majority of Russians perceive today: that all gay people are AIDS-spreading pedophiles, so that being gay is a contagious. Also that one can become gay by observing gay behavior and that gays are responsible for the ongoing depopulation of Russia. (This is a new one and contains more than a kernel of self-denial: drinking unto death is the more likely explanation for Russian population shrinkage.) Russian homophobia goes back centuries and was in full flight in the late 19th century, the Tchaikovsky era.

Tchaikovsky hid his gay "flaw" all his life. Many think the cholera story was a cover-up of his suicide. Tchaikovsky was caught out having an affair with Duke Stenbock-Thurmor's nephew. The duke was going to write a letter of protest to the Czar. This would have supposedly brought disgrace to Tchaikovsky. A "court of honor" made up of his former classmates in St. Petersburg ordered Tchaikovsky to swallow poison. He did. Or so the story goes. We'll never know which theory is true, the cholera or the suicide, but we do know that being in the closet all his life had an impact on his music. This will bring us, by and by, to Evgeniy Onegin (also known as Eugene Onegin).

Almost everything we know about Tchaikovsky today (and this is true about most classical composers) we learn through his letters exchanged with relatives and friends. In one letter to his brother when he was in his twenties, he says that he needs to get married. Not because he wants to have a family, but to help maintain his cover story. "I'll marry anyone that will have me." Shortly after, he got a fan letter from one of his former students at conservatory. She confessed her love for him. Tchaikovsky did not remember her, but they met. This is where the story gets murky. She wanted to marry him. He tried to explain to her that he was not interested in women and that it would be a fake marriage. Either he did not communicate that part that well or she did not understand it. They got married. She wanted more from him that he could give her. He could not physically stand her. His brother made up a story that doctors had told Tchaikovsky that his wife was making him sick. They separated.

At about the same time Tchaikovsky received a letter from Nedezhda von Meck, a very wealthy widow of a railroad magnate, who was also a fan of his music. Von Meck wanted to be his pen pal. She also ended up being his sugar mama (she supported him for thirteen years). They became close friends and exchanged over 1,000 letters. He dedicated his Symphony Number 4 to her. (I've written about that symphony here). But they never actually met!

There is a reason why I am writing about this. At about the time when Tchaikovsky received letters from his future wife and Nedezhda von Meck, he read Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. (For those who did not go in for the Russian classics, Pushkin is the godfather of Russian literature, the Russian Shakespeare, if you will.) Anyway, Tchaikovsky was asked many times to compose an opera based on Eugene Onegin. He always declined, because he felt the bar raised by Pushkin was too high. But one sleepless night he read Eugene Onegin and became infatuated with the "letter scene" (see how this all starts to make sense?). Tatyana, who is love with Onegin, is writing him a letter, confessing her love for him. It is a deeply emotional scene, and this is the scene that pushed Tchaikovsky into writing the opera. Her felt a significant personal connection to it.

We saw Eugene Onegin in "Live in HD" broadcast from the Met last month. To my great surprise, my son loved this opera (in some cultures, taking a twelve-year-old to see opera would be considered child abuse). So today I want to share with you a few excerpts from this opera.

http://myfavoriteclassical.com/tchaikovsky-eugene-onegin/


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

You've lost my attention with the gay plot, not relevant at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't see what Tchaikovsky's homosexuality has to do with _Eugene Onegin_ - or any of his music, actually.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Matthew Bourne's "gay Swan Lake" didn't happen until 1995, and I suspect Tchaikovsky would have been completely astonished and, possibly, horrified.

I _love_ it!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Matthew Bourne's "gay Swan Lake" didn't happen until 1995, and I suspect Tchaikovsky would have been completely astonished and, possibly, horrified.
> 
> I _love_ it!


On the other hand, all those man in tights.......


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

ClassicalMusicLover1 said:


> In the next few musical notes I'll share Tchaikovsky's music and what I've learned about him. There are several theories as to why Tchaikovsky died at age 53. The theory I heard when I was a child in Russia was that he died from cholera - probably from drinking contaminated water. However, there is another theory about his death: that he committed suicide. Tchaikovsky was a Russian national treasure, a symbol of Russian greatness, something the propaganda machine could point at and say, "Materialistic Americans have their poisonous hamburgers (and a chicken in every pot, and toilet paper, and…), but we got art." This is also why the propaganda machine would censor a little-known fact about its national hero: Tchaikovsky was gay.
> 
> Today we see headlines about Putin's homophobia, but as much as it's convenient to blame it on Putin, it is not him but his country (admittedly, a very general statement). I did not learn of the existence of gay people until I was 17, and what I was told about them by my friends and the media was not much different from what the majority of Russians perceive today: that all gay people are AIDS-spreading pedophiles, so that being gay is a contagious. Also that one can become gay by observing gay behavior and that gays are responsible for the ongoing depopulation of Russia. (This is a new one and contains more than a kernel of self-denial: drinking unto death is the more likely explanation for Russian population shrinkage.) Russian homophobia goes back centuries and was in full flight in the late 19th century, the Tchaikovsky era.
> 
> ...


We know which is true. The suicide rumor is nonsense and has been thoroughly debunked:

The earliest identified written source of the Tchaikovsky suicide rumor is in the as yet unpublished memoirs of one R.A. Mooser, a Swiss writer on music who arrived in St. Petersburg in 1896, well after the composer's death. He was never accepted in the musical circles of the city and Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky's biographer, suggests that this outsider status motivated him to pose as someone with juicy inside knowledge. He claims to have first heard the rumor from an unidentified critic at the St. Petersburg Zeitung. Later he claims to have heard it again from Riccardo Drigo, the ballet conductor at the Mariinsky Theater, and Alexander Glazunov. Since neither of these people could possibly have had any first hand knowledge of the alleged suicide, Mooser's report - even if his highly unlikely claims about Drigo and Glazunov are true - is at best third hand gossip written by a nonentity. Please let this ridiculous story DIE! It has no basis in fact. Besides, that late in Tchaikovsky's career the composer's homosexuality was an open secret. Everyone in the musical world in Russia pretty much knew, Tchaikovsky was happy and successful, and he had no reason to commit suicide, even if he was temperamentally capable of it, which he almost surely wasn't.


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## rff9 (May 20, 2021)

I first saw Evgeny Onegin in 1971 at the Bolshoi when I spent a year at MGU in Moscow. I think the best recording is the 1955 edition with Khaikin conducting and Lemeshev as Lensky. A few days ago I found a used 3-record set of Rostropovich conducting Onegin in 1970. The vinyl had some pops and clicks, so I cleaned it up digitally and uploaded my result, if anyone wants it, as follows:









https://cloud.mail.ru/public/69cC/rZDxh15hx


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Hmmmm. This probably should be moved to the opera forum.


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## rff9 (May 20, 2021)

I'm new on this site. I put my post on one of the opera discussions and I notice that you gave it a "like."
I'm not very knowledgeable about opera in general but I'm in the Russian/Slavic field and Eugene (Evgeny) Onegin has a special attraction since I once had a seminar in the Pushkin novel in verse that the opera is based on. I found this site by looking for some comments on the opera and I found the comments above about Tchaikovsky's psychology and its relation to his interest in Pushkin's work. Interesting to think about that. I have a large collection of Onegin performances by various Russian singers. Lemeshev 1955 and Kozlovsky 1948 are the best, in my opinion. The Rostropovich I mentioned above is a little disappointing because the vocal articulations are not as clear as they should be and sometimes feel drowned out by the orchestra. The perfect model for clear articulation is Lemeshev 1955. The aria Kuda, kuda vy udalilis'... is imprinted in my brain. Russian opera arias helped me learn the language.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

rff9 said:


> I'm new on this site. I put my post on one of the opera discussions and I notice that you gave it a "like."
> I'm not very knowledgeable about opera in general but I'm in the Russian/Slavic field and Eugene (Evgeny) Onegin has a special attraction since I once had a seminar in the Pushkin novel in verse that the opera is based on. I found this site by looking for some comments on the opera and I found the comments above about Tchaikovsky's psychology and its relation to his interest in Pushkin's work. Interesting to think about that. I have a large collection of Onegin performances by various Russian singers. Lemeshev 1955 and Kozlovsky 1948 are the best, in my opinion. The Rostropovich I mentioned above is a little disappointing because the vocal articulations are not as clear as they should be and sometimes feel drowned out by the orchestra. The perfect model for clear articulation is Lemeshev 1955. The aria Kuda, kuda vy udalilis'... is imprinted in my brain. Russian opera arias helped me learn the language.


I have 6 Onegin's on CD and my favorite is this one:


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## rff9 (May 20, 2021)

My Onegin collection consists of:
Melik-Pashaev/Orlov--1937
Orlov--1948
Khaikin--1955
Rostropovich--1970
Fedoseyev--1986
Friedmann--1996

That also works out to six. I may search for the 1936 Nebol'sin/Lemeshev version but I haven't rushed to do it because the 1955 Lemeshev audio is quite good and I doubt the 1936 edition would come near it.

I just found and downloaded the 1936 Onegin from a Russian site. Of course, not a physical disk, but a digital download from a previously issued Soviet record.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

rff9 said:


> My Onegin collection consists of:
> Melik-Pashaev/Orlov--1937
> Orlov--1948
> Khaikin--1955
> ...


Those older recordings are usually a challenge for sound quality but some are worth a listen or two.

Besides Fedoseyev, I have:

Bychkov
Ermler
Kahikin
Levine
Mackerras (Sung in English)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ClassicalMusicLover1 said:


> So today I want to share with you a few excerpts from this opera.
> http://myfavoriteclassical.com/tchaikovsky-eugene-onegin/


I think they're good;


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

In my youth, in the 1950s, I absolutely loved the symphonic music of Tchaikovsky (I did not know any the operas then). It "spoke" to me unlike like any other save Chopin's piano music. Coincidentally, the first records I heard were a pair of 12" 78rpm of Tchaikovsky's *Swan Lake*, which belonged to my parents.

In the U.S. I joined the Columbia Record Club (12 recordings for $1!) and bought all the Tchaikovsky they had! Once I got into opera, I explored beyond Peter Ilyich and later circled back to his operatic output. His operas never touched me the way his orchestral music did, though I think *Eugene Onegin* is the closest. A lot of his symphonic music has that kind of longing in it.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Having previously read the Tchaikovsky book and having just finished the spectacular Galina Vishnevskaya book, nothing at all would surprise me about the alternative possibility of his death -- nothing!
Being that Eugene Onegin is so close to my heart and brings immediate tears to my eyes whenever I view the death scene of Lensky and Neil Shicoff singing "Kuda, kuda", I could not agree more with the passion the OP feels about this opera.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Matthew Bourne's "gay Swan Lake" didn't happen until 1995, and* I suspect Tchaikovsky would have been completely astonished and, possibly, horrified. *
> 
> I _love_ it!


Strange. I think Tchaikovsky would have related favorably to it.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

Tchaikovsky 'Evgeny Onegin' act 2 finale.

the quarrel scene, which leads to the duel between the now former friends. Lensky, being a stubborn romanticist, cannot stand to see Olga (whom he considers his own) flirting with Onegin and is horrified at discovering such archaic traits in his 'betrothed' as promiscuity; well this was how it looks when one takes another for an ideal he built for himself to worship... in the settings of a provincial ball, in the midst of a mazurka, Lensky throws an *unlikely* scene where the whole affair gets disclosed in the presence of house guests.

Pushkin, it needs be said, portrays the goings-on in a tactful manner, as things were at the time, in reality, that such occurrences were passed unnoticed; before the conflict is 'duly' solved, of course... not so with Tchaikovsky who makes it look by the means of music & libretto, er, somewhat 'ugly' (thus parting his ways with the book) and blows it into a full scale public *scandal*, making clear that a single combat between the two is now inevitable, where Lensky is better off dead, for it was he who let a girl's name slip out and her reputation stained; the very sound of the final chord represents the 'assertive' decision of those present who in fact approve of the 'verdict' - offender to be slain:


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Matthew Bourne's "gay Swan Lake" didn't happen until 1995, and I suspect Tchaikovsky would have been completely astonished and, possibly, horrified.
> 
> I _love_ it!


I LOVED it (and I think he would have loved it too!!)
Please delete this post. It is a double posting.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> I LOVED it (and I think he would have loved it too!!)


Tchaikovsky might have loved Matthew Bourne's _Swan Lake_ (after the initial shock), but he would have had to keep that a secret.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Tchaikovsky might have loved Matthew Bourne's _Swan Lake_ (after the initial shock), but he would have had to keep that a secret.


Ah! But of course


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

sharik said:


> Tchaikovsky 'Evgeny Onegin' act 2 finale.
> 
> the quarrel scene, which leads to the duel between the now former friends. Lensky, being a stubborn romanticist, cannot stand to see Olga (whom he considers his own) flirting with Onegin and is horrified at discovering such archaic traits in his 'betrothed' as promiscuity; well this was how it looks when one takes another for an ideal he built for himself to worship... in the settings of a provincial ball, in the midst of a mazurka, Lensky throws an *unlikely* scene where the whole affair gets disclosed in the presence of house guests.


In opera everything is possible, you name it somehow it's findable.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

the book portrays the impending tragedy as depicted that Lensky, next morning, paid a visit to the Larins estate with intention to reprimand his Olga, but mellows immediately at seeing her so cheerful and welcoming as if nothing happened; he then himself feels relieved of this burden and is now completely in a mood to 'forget & forgive' to live on happily - but... his challenge to his rival still remains in place because had already been received and, even though unnoticed by the locals, one person does know of it. Zaretsky, whom Lensky had sent with a duel notice to Onegin, is covertly a provoker of duels between young noble men, so this now becomes a 'matter of honour' which makes the both fighters hostages to it, otherwise they are disgraced if decide to make up and call peace.

the opera puts it another way - Lensky has already passed the 'point of no return' so there already is no back down on his deal, from the very start, when he did what has done and is now kind of 'sentenced' by the public opinion, with their mores, rather than obliged by some notion of 'honour' the rules of which could still have been 'worked around' in theory, if not in practice... the listener & spectator here bear a witness to a sentence verdict being executed; administered by Onegin, the rival of Lensky.






even so, the book proceeds only to negate the tragic impression it has just made on the readers. Pushkin wants now poke fun at Lensky, in that this book character writes a 'farewell' letter to his 'beloved' which contains a verse done in a Romanticist style the author of the book obviously despised, for the verse of Lensky is presented in the book as being 'lame' and even kittenish at times. Pushkin detests the style. Tchaikovsky, however, loves it and takes issue with author book approach, so he goes with the very text Pushkin just derided and puts it to a music that will demonstrate the sheer power of Romanticism when it comes to transfer a narrative to sound; while in the book things go 'tone down' in order to preclude the readers from sympathising with Lensky (since he is about getting killed anyway) the opera rips it open to elicit genuine sympathy for the person doomed to death.






the Lensky aria has the music follow every phrase, almost fluctuating with every word (and it is a word for word text from the book) the very same words but now empowered by the music so, instead of appearing lame whilst divulged to paper, they gain depth and volume now these are embodied by the means of sound... we see and hear a man who beholds the void of Eternity while being tormented by the glimpses of the life that's left behind. Tchaikovsky does want his listeners to share in this anguish. Pushkin spares it his readers. Tchaikovsky takes his listeners to this.


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