Tchaikovsky's father was a successful mining engineer while his mother was the artistic, sensitive one, French by birth, and a good linguist. Pyotr was the second of her six children. He had a good ...

Other top ballets include Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake', Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet’ , 'Spartacus’ by Khachaturian, and ‘Don Quixote’, by Austrian composer Minkus... so, it's not a Russian monopoly!

Was Tchaikovsky a tempest or a drudge? The great Russian composer of iconic works like “The Nutcracker” and the “1812 ...