When Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his opera The Tsarina's Slippers, based on Gogol's story "Christmas Eve," he came up with something he had never managed before: an operatic comedy. It was his one and only comic opera, and somehow, that doesn't seem surprising
In many respects, Tchaikovsky's life was difficult and troubling. His internal struggles with his own sexuality are well known and hotly debated. His one marriage ended almost before it began, and its unhappiness led him to wade into the icy Moscow River in what may have been a suicide attempt.
One of his most famous works, the Symphony No. 4, begins with an ominous theme that's become known as the "fate motif." The subject of fate seemed to intrigue the composer; he once said that when confronting fate, a person's only choice is to "submit to it and lament in vain."
Tchaikovsky put his own lamentations front and center in his work. His well-known sixth symphony, called the Pathetique, is surely among music's most eloquent cries of anguish. Of Tchaikovsky's operas, the two most frequently seen onstage are both tragic psychodramas: Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
Yet there was a friendlier side to Tchaikovsky's musical personality. Every year at holiday time, children all over the world marvel at his whimsical ballet, The Nutcracker. And The Tsarina's Slippers, with a story based on a fanciful folk tale, is surely one of Russian opera's most charming comedies.
The opera began life in the mid-1870s with an entirely different title, Vakula the Smith. It was written for a competition sponsored by the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. To meet the contest's deadline, Tchaikovsky cranked out the score in just six weeks -- only to discover that he had misunderstood that deadline, and could have taken an additional six months.
Still, Tchaikovsky was happy with the opera, and it did win the competition. But the premiere got a cool reception. So, about 10 years later, Tchaikovsky revised the score extensively and gave it its new name. It never did achieve the success he had hoped for, but late in life he still called The Tsarina's Slippers the best of all his operas.
On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone presents a colorful production from London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It stars tenor Vsevolod Grivnov as the young man Vakula, and soprano Olga Guryakova as Oxana, the love of his life.
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