The Presidential Library reveals unknown pages of the creation of one of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s main masterpieces

On May 7, 2019, the musical world celebrates the 179th birthday of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. This year is very special for admirers of the composer's works - at the end of March exactly 140 years have passed since the first production of one of Tchaikovsky's main masterpieces - the opera Eugene Onegin. The composer worked on it in Russia, Switzerland, Italy, France... Despite the composer’s doubts, the work won popular affections immediately.

The premiere took place on the stage of the Maly Theater by the students of the Moscow Conservatory conducted by N. G. Rubinstein. A few years later, the opera went around all the major Russian scenes and during the life of the composer was staged in Prague and Hamburg.

Turgenev, who attended the opera rehearsal in February 1879, wrote a letter to Claudie Viardot, daughter of the famous singer: “The music seemed charming to me: hot, passionate, young, picturesque, poetic...” Although, according to Kashkin in his “Memoirs of P. I Tchaikovsky", Turgenev resented some particular operas, but at the same time he came to the delight of music and, by the way, said: "For me, for example, Lensky at Tchaikovsky seemed to have grown, became something more than Pushkin"".  

The composer himself attended the rehearsal. In a letter dated March 11, 1879 to Nadezhda von Meck, patron of the arts and admirer of Tchaikovsky’s talent (Correspondence with N. F. von Meck. 1. 1876–1878 is available on the Presidential Library’s portal), he writes: “At first I doubted whether I would go to Moscow on this occasion, but now I wanted to see the scenic embodiment of my dream <...> that my trip to Moscow does not represent any doubt”.

Finally, the day of the premiere of "Eugene Onegin" was March 29, 1879. 

Some musical critics explain the incredible success of “Eugene Onegin” by the composer’s inner state in which he found himself writing an immortal opera, saturated with tremendous creative power, love of life, but also associated with the moods of disappointment and confusion that Tchaikovsky himself experienced.

For his new opera, Pyotr Ilyich had been choosing the plot for a long time. He wrote to the composer Taneyev (Correspondence with P. I. Tchaikovsky and S. I. Taneyev is available on the Presidential Library’s portal): “I’m looking for an intimate, but powerful drama based on a conflict of provisions that I have experienced or seen that could hurt me living".

In the spring of 1877 singer E. A. Lavrovskaya "smiling good-naturedly" invited the composer to write an opera based on the story "Eugene Onegin". “This thought seemed wild to me, and I did not answer. Then, having lunch in a tavern alone, I remembered Onegin, I thought, then I began to find Lavrovskaya’s thought possible, then I got carried away and by the end of dinner I made a decision. Immediately he ran to look for Pushkin. I found it difficult, went home, reworded with delight and spent a completely sleepless night, the result of which was the script of a charming opera with the text of Pushkin”, - the composer shared with his brother Modest (Letters to relatives. V. 1. 1850–1879).

Tchaikovsky took for the opera only what is associated with the personal fates, emotional experiences of the characters, with their sensual and emotional inner world.

By this time, Tchaikovsky himself finds himself in a situation similar to Pushkin’s plot. When all his thoughts were occupied only by “Eugene Onegin”, especially the scene of Tatiana’s letter, he received love letters from Antonina Milyukova, whom he had known by that time for about five years. At first, Tchaikovsky did the same thing as Onegin: his answer is a cold rejection. He was completely “buried in his work” and so grasped Tatiana’s character and fell in love with this image that she and all the heroes of the poem began to seem real to him. Tchaikovsky admitted that as much as he loved Tatiana, he was so terribly angry with Onegin, whom he saw simply as cold and heartless. When Pyotr Ilyich received another letter from Antonina, he realized how heartless he felt about the girl who loved him: “He behaved infinitely worse than Onegin”.

Perhaps trying to avoid a repetition of the mistakes of the hero Pushkin, Tchaikovsky himself makes a rash act. “I was delirious, as it were”, - the composer later admitted. “Thus, I had a difficult alternative: either to preserve my freedom at the cost of the death of this girl (it’s not just an empty word: she really loves me endlessly) or I’m living with me. I could not choose the latter”, - we read in Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with N. F. von Meck. Pyotr Ilyich married Antonina Milyukova in the summer of 1877, but he frankly told his wife that he did not love her, although he would be a faithful friend.

Soon his relationship with his wife ends. He is experiencing a difficult situation, there are even thoughts of suicide. At the end of the year, Tchaikovsky leaves for Switzerland. During this period, only creativity becomes its main need and salvation. “I sat down to work and did as much in 6 days as I couldn’t expect. This work consumed me”.

Here are the lines from the letter to A. I. Davydova’s sister (Letters to relatives. V. 1. 1850–1879): “I must overcome my modesty and tell you this: except that I am Antonina Ivanovna’s husband, who ruthlessly received her ... there is another circumstance. I am an artist who can and should bring honor to his homeland. I feel great artistic power in me. I have not done a tenth of what I can do. And I want to do all this with all my soul”.

After the death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonina Milyukova wrote memoirs that were published on the pages of the Russian Musical Newspaper in 1913, which contain such words: “Eugene Onegin is the best of all his operas. It is good because it is written under the influence of love. It is directly written about us. Onegin is he himself, and Tatyana is me. Before and after written operas that are not warmed by love are cold and jerky. There is no integrity in them. This one is good from beginning to end”.

Pyotr Ilyich himself admitted in a letter to S. I. Taneyev: “I will tell you about music that if music was ever written with sincere passion, with love for the plot and for the actors, then it is music for Onegin”. I thawed and trembled with inexpressible pleasure when I created it. And if even the slightest bit of what I experienced writing this opera will respond to the listener, I will be very pleased and I don’t need more”.