To go back a bit in our composer’s life story, to an affair of the heart which he experienced in 1868.  He became engaged to the well-known singer Desiree Artot; the affair never went further, for what reason is not known.  He was not yet thirty, impressionable and intense.  Later on, in the year 1877, at the age of thirty-seven, he became a married man.  How this happened was doubtless told in his diaries, which were written with great regularity:  but unfortunately he destroyed them all a few years before his death.  The few facts that have been gleaned from his intimate friend, M. Kashkin, are that he was engaged to the lady in the spring of this year, and married her a month or so afterward.  It was evidently a hasty affair and subsequently brought untold suffering to the composer.  When the professors of his Conservatoire re-assembled in the autumn, Tschaikowsky appeared among them a married man, but looking the picture of despair.  A few weeks later he fled from Moscow, and when next heard of was lying dangerously ill in St. Petersburg.  One thing was evident, the ill-considered marriage came very near ruining his life.  The doctors ordered rest and change of scene, and his brother Modeste Ilyitch took him to Switzerland and afterward to Italy.  The peaceful life and change of scene did much to restore his shattered nerves.  Just at this time a wealthy widow lady, Madame von Meek, a great admirer of Tschaikowsky’s music, learning of his sad condition, settled on him a generous yearly allowance for life.  He was now independent and could give his time to composition.

The following year he returned to Moscow and seemed quite his natural self.  A fever of energy for work took possession of him.  He began a new opera, “Eugen Onegin,” and completed his Fourth Symphony, in F minor.  The score of the opera was finished in February, 1878, and sent at once to Moscow, where the first performance was given in March 1879.  In the beginning the opera had only a moderate success, but gradually grew in favor till, after five years, it was performed in St. Petersburg and had an excellent reception.  It is considered Tschaikowsky’s most successful opera, sharing with Glinka’s “Life of the Tsar” the popularity of Russian opera.  In 1881 he was invited to compose an orchestral work for the consecration of the Temple of Christ in Moscow.  The “Solemn Overture 1812,” Op. 49, was the outcome of this.  Later in the year he completed the Second Piano Concerto.  The Piano Trio in A minor, “To the memory of a great artist,” Op. 50, refers to his friend and former master, Nicholas Rubinstein, who passed away in Paris, in 1881.

Tschaikowsky’s opera, “Mazeppa,” was his next important work.  In the same year the Second Orchestral Suite, Op. 53, and the Third, Op. 55, followed.  Two Symphonic Poems, “Manfred” and “Hamlet” came next.  The latter of these was written at the composer’s country house, whose purchase had been made possible by the generosity of his benefactress, and to which he retired