Date	12/24 September 1889
Addressed to	Jules Massenet
Where written	Moscow
Language	French
Autograph Location	unknown ; auctioned in Paris in 1938
Publication	Lettres autographes et correspondances diverses adressées principalement au maître et à Mme Massenet. Vente Henri Baudoin, Paris, hôtel Drouot, 8 décembre 1938 (item no. 23; extracts only) [1]
Notes	For a detailed commentary on this letter, see "Klin, near Moscow, was the home of one of the busiest of men …" (Tchaikovsky Research Bulletin No.1)

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French text (extract)		English translation (extract) Copyright © 2010 by Luis Sundkvist
[…] À notre dernière entrevue, je vous avais prié de fixer définitivement la date du concert que vous conduirez, selon votre promesse, à la Société Impériale Musicale Russe de Moscou. Préoccupé par les répétitions d'"Esclarmonde", incertain, comme vous me le disiez, sur le sort que l'avenir réservait à cet opera, vous aviez voulu remettre à plus tard une réponse décisive à mes sollicitations […] Nous désirons pour plusieurs raisons que vous acceptiez ce jour-là […] et depuis longtemps la direction a réservé ce jour-là pour vous […] Je vous prie seulement de ne pas retirer votre promesse […] Vous m'avez donné l'autorisation d'annoncer votre arrivée à Moscou au public ; on vous attend avec impatience et notre position vis-à-vis du public muscovite serait bien fausse si son attente ne se réalisait pas. De grâce, venez, cher maître! Je vous assure que cela n'est pas aussi fatiguant ni aussi difficile que l'on se l'imagine [...]		[...] At our last meeting I asked you to give a definitive date for the concert which, as you promised, you will conduct at the Imperial Russian Musical Society of Moscow [2]. Since you were then preoccupied with the rehearsals for Esclarmonde, and, as you told me, also uncertain as to the fate which the future held in store for this opera, you expressed the wish to postpone a final response to my requests until sometime later [[3] ...] For several reasons we would like you to accept that date [4 April 1890] [...] and the board of directors has long since booked that date for you [...] I beg you only not to go back on your promise [...] You authorized me to announce to the public that you would be coming to Moscow; you are expected there impatiently, and our situation with regard to the Muscovite public would be quite awkward if its expectations were to fail to come true. Please do come, dear maître! I assure you that all this is neither as exhausting nor as difficult as you may imagine [...]

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Notes:

1. A scan of the relevant page in this auction catalogue was kindly provided by Jean-Christophe Branger of the Université Jean Monnet in Saint-Etienne, who also mentions this letter in the introduction to his book Manon de Jules Massenet, ou, Le crépuscule de l'opéra-comique (Metz, 1999), p. 10, n. 8 [back]
2. Earlier that year, during his second conducting tour of Western Europe, Tchaikovsky had sought to help the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society (which had recently lost its principal conductor, Max Erdmannsdörfer) by inviting, in the name of the society, several prominent European musicians and composers to conduct concerts there during the 1889–90 season. One of these composers was Massenet, who had written to Tchaikovsky to accept this invitation (in a letter that has not come down to us), and to whom Tchaikovsky had in turn replied from Dresden on 5/17 February 1889 (see letter 3787a). A few weeks later, when his concert tour took him to Paris, Tchaikovsky had met his French colleague for the first time, and on 21 March/2 April he had reported the following to his publisher Jurgenson: "I have seen Massenet several times; he is very flattered and glad to come to Russia. He still can't give an exact date, but would prefer to come in the spring [of 1890]" (see letter 3826). In the end, though, despite Tchaikovsky's entreaties in the above letter, Massenet did not keep his promise to come to Russia and conduct a concert there [back]
3. The sentences that follow are paraphrased in the auction catalogue containing extracts of this letter: Esclarmonde had turned out to be a great success [Massenet's opera was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 14 May 1889 [N.S.]]; it was now essential to know when Massenet would be coming to Russia; would 4 April 1890 be a convenient date for him? [back]

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This page was last updated on 04 February 2011