I first blogged about Polish composer André Tchaikovsky in 2013, when I was involved in a symposium in Leeds, dedicated to his life and work. At the time, André’s operatic treatment of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – nearly complete at the time of his death aged 46 – was getting its first performances at the Bregenz Festival. You can read the FT’s review here.
In my previous post I didn’t mention that André was a friend of my family and that he stayed with us whenever he was performing in the area. His Merchant of Venice had occupied him for most of his adult life and I had heard all about it, not least his disappointment that it had not in the end received its planned premiere at ENO. He wanted to be remembered as a composer as well as a piano virtuoso.
The Merchant of Venice has been made as a co-production between Bregenz, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Teatr Wielki and WNO, so was reasonable to hope that such an important twentieth-century opera would eventually get performances in London.
Last week I finally got to see the opera and it was worth the wait. I was pretty young when I knew André and can’t pretend to remember him in every detail but I have spent time with him since in his songs, via the Rebel of the Keys documentary and in conversation with others who also knew him. He felt so present in every bar of The Merchant of Venice, with the courtroom confrontation between Shylock and Antonio packing the biggest punch for me because it focussed the themes of the opera which were of greatest significance to André personally. Wonderful performances and a lovely clean production (designed originally for the pontoon stage of Bregenz Festival) made for a great evening.
André’s wish for his skull to appear as Yorick has been fulfilled, so the staging of The Merchant of Venice was the last piece of unfinished business for him. I think he would be pleased.