Hershey Felder as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Photo courtesy Hershey Felder Presents
By Steve Simmons – Posted at 10:45 a.m., Dec. 17, 2020
The great Romantic-era composer of beloved ballets and maybe the most dramatic overture ever, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, adored Italy, especially art-filled Florence. Playwright, performer and designer Hershey Felder proves it in the latest of his one-man shows on the lives of great composers.
Hershey Felder Presents- Live From Florence, will present Hershey Felder, Tchaikovsky in a one-time only, live streamed event at 5 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 20 (see details below).
The show is based on the original production of Our Great Tchaikovsky, and features an extended focus on The Nutcracker ballet in honor of the holiday season, as well as Tchaikovsky’s life in Florence where he spent considerable time.
Felder himself has lived in Florence for several years, though pre-COVID-19 he was largely touring the US with his biographical shows. “We filmed in the apartment where Tchaikovsky actually lived, and placed he visited and worked in when he was here,” said Felder in an email from Florence. “He loved this city very much.” Sights featured in the show include those Tchaikovsky mentioned in letters written between 1874 and 1890 that were important to him including Villa Bonciani, the residence where he composed his Suite No. 1 in 1878, as well as the Piazalle Michelangelo, Museo Bellini, Palazzo Pitti, Ponte Vecchio, Tornabuoni, and locations along the Arno River.
In Felder’s 2017 initial Tchaikovsky play, he opened it as himself and read an actual letter he received the Russian government inviting him to write a play about the country’s leading composer and bring it to Russia. But Felder couldn’t honor their request, because in 2013 Russia’s parliament passed a family values law that banned gay “propaganda.” Felder feels Tchaikovsky’s repressed homosexuality was so important to who he was, the short 53-year life he lived and the music he wrote, that it would be dishonest to pretend it didn’t exist.
A City He Loved
He’s removed that from his revised version. “I have relocated the story to very important and revealing things that happened in Florence, in particular, because this is where he came immediately following his disastrous short-lived marriage” says Felder. “It’s a good launching point for a story about his character.” .Just six weeks after marrying Antonina Miliukova in 1877, the secretly gay Tchaikovsky moved out and soon left the country. On February 13, 1878, he wrote his brother Anatoly from Florence: “Only now, especially after the tale of my marriage, have I finally begun to understand that there is nothing more fruitless than not wanting to be that which I am by nature.”
Felder’s altered his original show to explore how Tchaikovsky found respite and inspiration in Florence where he wrote his string sextet Souvenir de Florence. On one of his first visits, he collected the text and tune of his song Pimpinella, the last of his Op. 38 Romances and a favorite among Russian singers. A later visit prompted the first ideas for his opera The Maid of Orleans. His final trip, in 1890, was the most productive. He wrote his opera The Queen of Spades, and also came up with of melody that became the theme for the sextet’s slow movement.
Tchaikovsky loved the city, for its literature and inspirational atmosphere, but mostly because it was home of his rather mysterious patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, who stipulated that they never meet.
It’s The Music
Felder has carved out his own niche as playwright and performer of meticulously researched presentations on composers ranging from American icons like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin to classical masters like Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Liszt.
What they all have in common for Felder is “the music. As of my last reading of the numbers, Tchaikovsky is the most performed serious composer in the world, even beating Beethoven. Imagine!” Feller said.
“And yes, his tortured life is very much so reflected in his music,” says Felder. “In fact, in his own writing, he talks a lot about wordless expression that allows him to communicate feelings in ways that no other means can.”
As with other composers where Felder went in with fixed pieces in mind, “in this case, because there is so much Tchaikovsky that is both familiar and moving, I let the story itself guide the musical choice.” So, there’s the Piano Concerto No.1, piano miniatures The Seasons, symphonic works and the famed 1812 Overture. Though he plays it impressively in the show, Felder points out that wasn’t the composer’s favorite piece. “He said often enough that he wasn’t fond of that piece. But he was very fond of his Sixth Symphony (Pathetique) and I use that piece as a central story-telling mechanism.”
And that story includes a childhood that was taken from him and a history of being attracted to adolescent males—which he was distraught about—including an infatuation with his own nephew Vladimir Davydov or “Bob,” for whom he wrote the Sixth Symphony.
While he points out they’re not impressions, Felder is known for inhabiting his subject and he employs a definite Russian accent for Tchaikovsky. “It’s not complicated for me as I grew up surrounded by it – extended family members,” says Felder. “What is complicated is how much to employ the accent. In my case, it is employed for color of sound, not for affect per se, but I have never met a Russian who has lived in the West who thinks they still have as pronounced an accent as they do. But I have to find a balance between color of sound and being understood.”
To give the show a holiday touch, Felder has added expanded coverage of Tchaikovsky’s beloved Nutcracker, using film and a recorded orchestra to color the story. Tchaikovsky began work in February 1891, continuing work while on an American tour later that year for the opening of Carnegie Hall and finished in the spring of 1892. The score is famous for its use of the celesta (Tchaikovsky had already used it in his lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda) for the Sugar Plum Fairy, toy instruments for the Christmas party scene and wordless female chorus during the Waltz of the Flowers. While many sources say the composer didn’t like the score or found it less satisfying than his other ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, which Felder also covers. “He liked it,” says Felder. “The public and critics not so much.” According to accounts, Tchaikovsky said the audience was bored.
Going Live
The live streaming thing was never something Felder dreamed about, but he knew the shows would be produced in Florence where he was planning to “relax into life and art. The pandemic has pushed everything forward. Against my better instinct and out of a responsibility to the company staff who have been with me for years, I created the Live From Florence brand and it took off.” He considers the programs “live cinema,” and the live stream is directed by Florentine cinema artists Stefano Decarli, based on the original stage play directed by Trevor Hay.
He started with his Irving Berlin show for Mother’s Day and is progressing “slowly and carefully” with the next events, Before Fiddler, about author Sholem Aleichem, creator of the Tevye the Milkman stories, the source material for Fiddler on the Roof; and Puccini about Giacomo Puccini, composer of operas La Boheme, Tosca and Turandot and more.
Proceeds from Tchaikovsky – Live From Florence will benefit more than 20 national and international arts institutions and publications and The Actors Fund, providing emergency assistance to performing arts professionals impacted by the current pandemic.
Ticket purchase includes the live stream and an additional week of “on demand” view access to the recording of the life stream. Tickets are $55 per household, for viewing on Smart TV, computer, smartphone or tablet. Patrons will receive a link and password three days before the event. Tickets may be purchased by visiting TheWallis.org/Tchaikovsky, by email at Tickets@TheWallis.org or by calling 310-746-4000 .
