P i tchaikovsky biography operations

British Broadcasting Corporation Home. Sean Rafferty presents a selection of music and guests from the arts world.

P i tchaikovsky biography operations: He was the first Russian composer

View full schedule. Tchaikovsky was the second of six children born to upper-middle-class parents — his father was at one time director of a technological institute. The future composer was thus lined up for a career in the civil service, but there was no opposition when he switched to music. Nearly two years later he met Balakirev, father-figure to the Russian Nationalist composers, who gave Tchaikovsky the structural plan for his Romeo and Juliet overture.

By now he was a national celebrity. But in he agreed to marry an importunate young woman who threatened suicide if he rejected her; he left her within the year, and she spent her last two decades in a mental hospital. Also about the same time, Tchaikovsky was approached by a rich widow, Nadezhda von Meck, who initiated a year friendship, by correspondence only, and granted him a pension.

Meanwhile came some of the most productive years of his life, beginning with the first big success among his symphonies, the Fourth, and the opera Eugene Onegin, the fifth of eight completed operas. Clouds gathered again — though with magnificent artistic results — in the Manfred symphony , based on Byron, and the Fifth Symphony