Beyond the Music

The life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky does not lack melodramatic potential. The composer of ballet classics such as “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker” was celebrated by Imperial Russia for his compositions yet simultaneously forced to hide his homosexuality. The husband-and-wife team Tara Ghassemieh and Vitor Luiz, who previously mounted the acclaimed independent production “The Persian Swan,” recently premiered “Tchaikovsky: A Love Story” on September 5th at the Musco Center of the Arts at Chapman University. A supportive crowd forgave the usual small mishaps that characterize opening night performances. Despite some promising performances, however, the production is marred by a libretto by Roya Zahra Rastegar that is difficult to follow—on multiple occasions, I found myself squinting in the dark to consult the program notes—and, more unfortunately, a reductive portrayal of Tchaikovsky himself.

Performance

“Tchaikovsky: A Love Story” by Tara Ghassemieh and Vitor Luiz

Place

Musco Center of the Arts, Chapman University, Orange, CA, September 5, 2025

Words

Robert Steven Mack

Vitor Luiz and Natalie Palmgren in “Tchaikovsky: A Love Story” by Tara Ghassemieh and Vitor Luiz. Photograph by Sam Zauscher

This not a chronological story, but a journey through selective memories. An elderly Tchaikovsky, danced by Luiz, conducts his last completed work, the Pathétique Symphony, before being condemned at a secret tribunal of the Court of Honor. In the final six days of his life, Tchaikovsky relives pivotal moments in his life. In the libretto, each of these “Memories” is based on the historical letters he wrote during his lifetime.

In Memory I, a younger Tchaikovsky, portrayed by David Prottas, receives a visit from his younger brother Modest, danced by the sprightly Skylar Campbell, who introduces him to the young musician Eduard Zak, performed by Marshall Whitley. In a flurry of pique turns and high battements, the muse-like Museic, embodied by Ghassemieh, unites them. In Memory II, this romance carries Tchaikovsky into an especially fruitful creative period. When rumors and idle gossip turn into social ostracization, however, Tchaikovsky backs away from the relationship, leaving a despairing Eduard to pen one last letter before taking his own life. As Tchaikovsky grieves deeply, Museic draws him back to his work.

In the tragicomic Memory III, Tchaikovsky weds Antonina Miliukova to hide his sexuality. No matter how much Antonina fawns over the disinterested Tchaikovsky, the marriage is a sham and ends in tears, unconsummated. As Antonina, dancer Victoria Jenkins combined crystalline technique with a broadly comedic delivery. When she vocalized her screams of despair or crying, however, the evening tipped over the edge from theatricality to camp, foreshadowing the truly cringeworthy “Dream Interlude.”

David Prottas, Victoria Jenkins, and Tara Ghassemieh in “Tchaikovsky: A Love Story” by Tara Ghassemieh and Vitor Luiz. Photograph by Sam Zauscher

In this second act closer, the ensemble, decked out in Fosse-esque tights made their way to the front of the stage in a clump, shaking their fannies to the Sugarplum variation from “The Nutcracker Suite,” as performed live onstage by two jazz musicians from the Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles. It is worth noting that “The Nutcracker” was composed in 1892, but Rastegar’s libretto ends the second act in 1877. Confused as to why this ballet had suddenly turned into ”Chicago,” I looked once again at the program notes. It reads, “rhythm breaks into syncopation, the echo of jazz and the freedom of sounds not yet imagined. Museic enters— frenetic, ecstatic. Shadows of the past move through him, binding memory to the future.” I suspect that if Tchaikovsky knew that that was what lay in the future for his composition, he would have little interest in being bound to anything.

The second act opens with Memory IV sometime around 1888 to 1889, in which we see the birth of creation—Marius Petipa, danced by Daniel Deivison, choreographs the Rose Adagio from “Sleeping Beauty,” a sort of tip of the nostalgia hat to balletomanes.

The high mark of the second act was the vignette with Nadezhda von Meck, danced with tragic lyricism by Rachell Hutsell, the stage bare save for the lonely vanity table she sits at. As the program notes related, Von Meck, the wealthy widow of a railroad magnet, supported Tchaikovsky financially and developed a deep friendship through correspondence only. The Von Meck episode in the ballet recalls the final letter that she wrote to him, informing the composer that she can no longer support his work. “Society has forced her hand,” reads the program, provocatively. For context, the Von Meck railroad empire was in financial trouble as the government had confiscated the families shares in the Ryazan branch which was important for grain shipments. Von Meck was also suffering from tuberculosis by this point.

In the final vignette, Memory VI, Tchaikovsky finally throws caution to the wind and engages in a passionate affair with Prince Vladimir, danced by the stately Maté Szentes. Upon being caught, Tchaikovsky appears before the secret tribunal, which forces him to commit suicide. In the epilogue, the composer accepts his fate, or as the program notes put it: “Poetry must choose. Fate seizes Museic. Death, or legacy.” Tchaikovsky chooses the former, but the music lives on.

“Tchaikovsky: A Love Story” by Tara Ghassemieh and Vitor Luiz. Photograph by Sam Zauscher

Despite the standing ovation and the sanctimonious praise I overheard in the lobby thereafter, too many dimensions of his life were left out in the ballet to recall a complete picture of Tchaikovsky, reducing the composer to a maudlin trope of a tortured artist. Take for instance the use at the end of the second act of the strangely melancholic Grand Pas de Deux music from “The Nutcracker.” Using this all-to-familiar score here erroneously suggests Tchaikovsky wrote it while coming to grips with his “doomed” life and romances. Notably missing is the character of Sasha, Tchaikovsky’s beloved sister, for whom he composed the pas de deux as a means to grieve her premature death.

There was nonetheless much to appreciate about choreography of both the same-sex and opposite-sex partnerships, including intriguing lifts and weight sharing to compensate for the lack of pointe shoes. The ensemble was strong too, particularly Ghassemieh as Tchaikovsky’s metaphorical muse, with her long, powerful limbs and controlled pirouettes that float to a halt in midair.

It’s a shame that the production reduces Tchaikovsky to a tortured artist. In the recent biography, Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer, the music historian Simon Morrison encourages readers to look at the consummate whole of Tchaikovsky’s life and career rather than a handful of melodramatic letters. Urging caution when interpreting historical documents, he advises that “[The letters] express emotion in a nineteenth-century language remote from our own. Even the way Tchaikovsky processed grief or dealt with failure is very distant.” Whatever one’s opinion of the letters, it’s all too easy to put modern projections on Tchaikovsky’s inner life. Morrison also writes that “to produce as much music as he did—an entire empire’s worth—Tchaikovsky had to be hyperfocused and hyperdisciplined, not lurching from one personal crisis to another and indulging morbid fantasies.” To be clear, Tchaikovsky did legitimately struggle with being homosexual in Imperial Russia, but he was no outsider either. He supported the Empire through compositions such as the 1812 Overture.

Most problematic of all is that Rastegar’s libretto rests on a largely discredited theory of his death. As much as the program notes claim in conspiratorial language that this ballet represents the “truth” of Tchaikovsky’s end, that it strips away the “sanitized” version of history, and that it pulls away the curtain from one of the greatest “cover ups” in Russian history, the idea that a secret tribunal forced his suicide lacks sufficient evidence. In all likelihood, Tchaikovsky contracted Asiatic cholera in 1893 from foul drinking water, which was how his death was officially recorded. A cholera epidemic had made its way from Astrakhan near the Caspian Sea, overwhelming field hospitals, spread throughout the Volga River and ultimately infested St. Petersburg’s weak water and sewage systems. Perhaps however, the lure of making Tchaikovsky into Socrates, forced to die by poison to maintain his personal integrity, was too enticing.

Hopefully, future works based on Tchaikovsky’s life will strip away the trope of a suffering artist and explore the fuller dimensions of the man. If you are really interested in celebrating the life of Tchaikovsky, you're better off seeing “The Nutcracker.”

Robert Steven Mack

Robert Steven Mack is a writer based in Southern California who has been published in The New Criterion, Law and Liberty, American Purpose, and Arts Fuse. Robert received his Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University, Bloomington, from which he also holds a BA in History and a BS in Ballet Performance from the Jacobs School of Music.

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