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 Urging caution when interpreting historical documents, he advises that “[The letters] express emotion in a nineteenth-century language remote from our own.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.”