Peter Ilitsch Tchaikovsky Posters, Prints, Books, Recordings
for the music studio, arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers, theme decor.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
b. 4-25-1840; Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia
d. 11-6-1893; St Petersburg

Tchaikovsky was a composer of ballets, operas, symphonies, and concertos of the Romantic era. His music is known and loved for its Russian character expressed in folk melodies, effective use of international elements and rich harmonies. Tchaikovsky's cause of death is generally accepted to be suicide.

The Swan Lake ballet, composed by Tchaikovsky (1875-76), was inspired by Russian folk tales and traditional symbolism of the swan as faithful to tell the story of the Princess Odette.

Odette is cursed to be a swan by day and human at night by the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart. The spell can only be broken by the power of eternal love between Odette and a young man, Prince Siegfried, who must remain faithful to her or she will take on the form of a swan forever. Von Rothbart disguishes his own daughter Odile as Odette to make Siegfriend unfaithful, thus keeping Odette imprisoned in the curse. The last scene is of the princess and prince ascending into heaven, having broke the curse through eternal love, and reversing the curse.

The Christmas themed ballet, The Nutcracker, is a fairy tale-ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on Alexandre Dumas père's adaptation of the story by E.T.A. Hoffmann “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”.

The Sleeping Beauty, a ballet with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, is based the Brothers Grimm version of Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois. Characters from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales were incorporated into the original story. It was first staged in 1890 with Maurice Petipa as the choreographer.

Sergei Diaghilev staged an abridged version in 1921-22 entitled Aurora's Wedding and in 1999 the Kirov Ballet restaged the original version.