The Unknown Tchaikovsky (Video)
On Saturday, August 15, Dr. Simon Morrison presented “The Unknown Thaikovsky” as a part of the Russian History Museum’s Second Saturday online lecture series.
Composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of a fascinating reality. Dr. Simon Morrison recreates Tchaikovsky’s complex world and redefines his most famous works: his opera “Eugene Onegin,” as well as his ballets “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker.”
About the Speaker
Simon Morrison is professor of music and Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University. He is the author of Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer (Yale University Press, 2024) and A Kingdom and an Empire: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow (Knopf, 2026).
Morrison received his M.A. in Music History from McGill University and Ph.D. in Music History from Princeton University.
