Composed 1877; Duration: 26 minutes

First BPO Performance: January 22, 1946 (Victor Alessandro, conductor)
 
Last BPO Performance: February 22-23, 2020 (JoAnn Falletta, conductor)

Early in his career, Tchaikovsky used music criticism as an excuse to get out of Moscow and into Europe’s concert halls to hear the vanguard of modern composition. In 1876, he attended the inaugural Bayreuth Festival, where Wagner’s Ring Cycle was first performed in its entirety. He also attended a performance of Wagner’s counterpart in modernism, Franz Liszt’s “Dante” Symphony. Returning home to Moscow, Tchaikovsky was inspired by the cutting-edge music he heard from Wagner and Liszt, and in a fit of creativity, composed a narrative symphonic poem of his own based on some of his light travel reading.

Intensely gripped by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tchaikovsky plucked a story from the Inferno as the subject of his tone poem. Francesca da Rimini was a real person, immortalized by Dante’s writing. Unhappily subjected to a political marriage with the disabled nobleman Giovanni Malatesta, Francesca is embroiled in an affair with his brother Paolo. Giovanni catches them in the act and kills them both. Forever condemned to hell, the two would-be lovers whirl about in a perpetual tempest. 

In Dante’s account, Francesca (or, her soul) is given a substantial platform to explore moral agency, ascribing love the responsibility for her sins rather than accepting blame. The themes of forbidden love, moral agency, and condemnation resonated with the secretly homosexual Tchaikovsky. The musical picture is painted with thick, tense harmonies and swirling lines, as Russian melodies kindle a heightened emotional state. The brutality of the parable is shocking, and Tchaikovsky expresses empathy for the lovers’ appalling fate.