Anton Chekhov Opera

One of Tchaikovsky's most curious acquaintances was with Anton Chekhov, in the early part of the writer's career. Chekhov actually dedicated his second collection of short stories, the appropriately titled Gloomy People, to the composer, with the inscription, "from his future librettist."

The collaboration between Chekhov and Tchaikovsky never occurred, and it's one I struggle to imagine. Chekhov's characters are so modern in their predicaments--they are as inert as Beckett's tramps--that it is hard to reconcile them with Tchaikovsky's music, which is propelled by romantic action. But then again, Tchaikovsky's music might reveal the inner desperations of characters such as Vanya, even as Vanya basically does nothing.

Or the final movement of the "Pathétique" Symphony might serve as an undercurrent of despair in the final scene of The Cherry Orchard. And maybe we can imagine Tchaikovsky's music playing to the lyric "I'm in mourning for my life." That wouldn't be a bad beginning to an opera. And it would end with a suicide too!

And then, just as I was about to post this and go home, I did a search and found that there is an opera adaptation of The Seagull, music by Thomas Pasatieri, libretto by Kenward Elmslie, first performed in Houston in 1974, being revived in New York this fall.

But I doubt it sounds anything like Tchaikovsky.