THE TCHAIKOVSKY LETTERS

                             a play

               by Norman L. Berman                    

Thirty-eight-year-old Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky is driven to become Russia’s first international composer, but he is moving into middle-age and gossip around Moscow is that he is a notorious homosexual.  He needs a wife.  As if by fate, two women come into his life: Nadezdha Von Meck, a wealthy, recluse dowager and Antonina Milyukova, an assertive, unbalanced seamstress.  Von Meck, befriends Tchaikovsky through a series of elaborately written letters.  She eventually offers to pay his all his expenses on one condition: they never meet.  Antonina, also sends him extravagant love letters, letting him know that she is a virgin and that she has saved herself just for him.  Tchaikovsky takes advantage of Antonina’s naiveite and inexperience and marries her.  The marriage is a fiasco.  Tchaikovsky flees Russia fearing more gossip, but Antonina is not as naive as he thinks and threatens to expose Tchaikovsky.  It is at this time, through his friendship with Von Meck, he comes to grips with his homosexuality and realizes his true nature.