Tsar Alexander III requests a new production…

Tsar Alexander III requests a new production of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin to be staged at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in Saint Petersburg in 1885 (Its only other production had been by students from the Conservatory.)

By having the opera staged there and not at the Mariinsky Theater, he serves notice that Tchaikovsky's music is replacing Italian opera as the official imperial art.

In addition, thanks to Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theaters and a patron of the composer, Tchaikovsky is awarded a lifetime annual pension of three thousand rubles from the Tsar.

This makes him the premier court composer, in practice if not in actual title.

Tchaikovsky, forty-four years old in 1884, had begun to shed his unsociability and restlessness.

In March of that year, the Tsar had conferred upon him the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class), which carries with it hereditary nobility and wins Tchaikovsky a personal audience with the Tsar.

This is a visible seal of official approval which advanced Tchaikovsky's social standing.

This advance may have been cemented in the composer's mind by the great success of his Orchestral Suite No. 3 at its January 1885 premiere in Saint Petersburg, under Hans von Bülow's direction, at which the press was unanimously favorable.