Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Although effort was made to censor any suggestion of homosexuality from Tchaikovsky's surviving letters, thanks to the work of historians and biographers he is now widely acknowledged to be a homosexual. Seen positively as a "Queer Composer," the evidence suggests that Tchaikovsky was most romantically and sexually drawn to youthful features and young males in their teens and 20s.

A book review for Debauched Genius: The Loves of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (2021), discusses his sex life and sexual attractions in the wake of newly available documents published in 2018.

There has been a historic legend around Tchaikovsky alleged attempting suicide, analyzed and refuted by scholars such as Alexander Poznansky. The plot of the legend, according to which the scandal erupted because of Tchaikovsky's acquaintance on a steamship with the 13-year-old nephew of Count Stenbock-Fermor, reproduces the real story of Tchaikovsky's friendship with 14-year-old Vladimir (Volodya) Sklifosovsky (the son of a famous surgeon) in April 1889, which caused a stir.

In Tchaikovsky’s diaries during his stay in Klin, one can find numerous entries of an erotic nature about peasant children, whom he, in the words of Poznansky, “corrupted with gifts,” However, according to him, Tchaikovsky's eroticism in relation to them was platonic, amounting to aesthetic appreciation.