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Updated: May 31, 2025
The same month a telegram informed Tschaikovski that his fiancée had very suddenly become engaged to a singer in her own troupe, the Spanish baritone, Padilla y Ramos, who was two years younger even than Tschaikovski. The singers were married at Sèvres, September 15, 1869. Tschaikovski, on receiving the first news, seemed "more surprised than pained."
Their parting must have been cold, for in January, 1869, Tschaikovski wrote his brother a letter, excitedly referring to the acceptance of his opera, and coldly hinting that his love affair would probably come to nothing. We remember how calmly Mozart once wrote of his operatic triumph and how passionately of his love.
In 1902, however, his brother Modeste began the publication of a very elaborate and complete biography, which partially clears the riddle. This is what we learn from that: In 1875 Tschaikovski was a wreck. In 1876 he suddenly wrote his brother: "I have resolved to marry the resolve is beyond recall;" and again: "The result of my thought is the firm resolve to marry with whomsoever it may be."
The father's letter showed an enthusiasm the son's lacked. Before Anatol could reach Moscow, Tschaikovski was Benedick July 6, 1877, he being then within three years of forty. The curious details of the courtship are told by the composer himself in a letter to Frau von Meek, a wealthy idolatress of his genius, with whom he had one of those affairs called Platonic, and of whom more later.
Modeste says that without this relief from anxiety Tschaikovski would have died. He wrote to the benefactress: "Let every note from my pen henceforth be dedicated to you." This was not the first time she had aided him. A strange, notable woman, she; a true phenomenon or a phenomena, as one would be tempted to say who had even less Greek than I or Shakespeare, if such an one exist.
There have been the unhappily wed, who, through the fault of themselves, or their wives, found and made misery at home, and sought nepenthe elsewhere, such as Haydn, Berlioz, and Tschaikovski. There have been married lives of mixed nature, neither failure nor success, such as the careers of Lully, Rameau, Stradivari, and Wagner.
After a time, a lady came out. "Tschaikovski leaped to his feet and turned white. The woman gave a little cry of alarm, and confusedly fumbled for the door. Finding it at last, she fled without speaking." In 1888 Tschaikovski went to Berlin. There Désirée was the idol of the court and public. They met now as friends.
The last touch to this tragedy was the sordid tinge of poverty. The wretched man alone in Switzerland was without means. Now Frau von Meck, with great secrecy, offered him an annual income of 6,000 rubles about $4,500 purely in payment, she said, of the delight his music had given her. He accepted a gift so graciously and gracefully made. Tschaikovski was thenceforth an institution fully endowed.
She had taught him the pangs of disprised love, but she had escaped misery, and she seems to have lived happily ever afterward with a husband who won eminence equal to hers as a singer. As for Tschaikovski, he had already revenged himself in kind in worse kind upon the sex, which had really attracted him only once.
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