7 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 7Eugene Onegin, the Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, and the Violin
Concerto in D Major. From December 1878 to August 1879 he
worked on the opera The Maid of Orleans, which was not
particularly well received. Over the next 10 years Tchaikovsky
produced his operas Mazepa (1883; based on Aleksandr
Pushkin’s Poltava) and The Enchantress (1887), as well as the
masterly symphonies Manfred (1885) and Symphony No. 5 in
E Minor (1888). His other major achievements of this period
include Serenade for Strings in C Major, Opus 48 (1880),
Capriccio italien (1880), and the 1812 Overture (1880).
Final Years
At the beginning of 1885, tired of his peregrinations,
Tchaikovsky settled down in a rented country house near
Klin, outside of Moscow. There he adopted a regular
daily routine that included reading, walking in the forest,
composing in the mornings and the afternoons, and
playing piano duets with friends in the evenings. At the
January 1887 premiere of his opera Cherevichki, he finally
overcame his longstanding fear of conducting. Moreover,
at the end of December he embarked upon his first
European concert tour as a conductor, which included
Leipzig, Berlin, Prague, Hamburg, Paris, and London. He
met with great success and made a second tour in 1889.
Between October 1888 and August 1889 he composed his
second ballet, The Sleeping Beauty. During the winter of
1890, while staying in Florence, he concentrated on his
third Pushkin opera, The Queen of Spades, which was
written in just 44 days and is considered one of his finest.
Later that year Tchaikovsky was informed by Nadezhda
von Meck that she was close to ruin and could not continue
his allowance. This was followed by the cessation of their
correspondence, a circumstance that caused Tchaikovsky
considerable anguish.