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6 A Villa at Peterhof and Operatic Successes, 1873–85 The period from the end of Rubinstein’s American tour until his reappointment as director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1887 can be regarded as a period of consolidation. It saw the end of his forty-seven-year career as a concert artist and established his name as a composer with a European reputation . While continuing to give regular solo concerts, his endless peregrinations around Europe in the 1870s and 1880s stemmed as much from the need to supervise and conduct his operas and symphonies as from appearing on the concert platform. He strove tirelessly to promote his works, and for several decades his operas were regularly performed in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere. Although ultimately his reputation as a successful composer proved illusory, undoubtedly some of his music genuinely struck a chord with audiences of the day. His repudiation of Wagnerism, his nostalgic harking back to the era of sentimental romanticism, and his innate conservatism must have seemed to many a sobering antidote to contemporary excesses. In later years he made some small concessions to “modernist” trends, especially in his works with a Russian element , but this was never enough to satisfy his critics. At the same time he realized that, despite all the accolades he had received as a ¤rst-rank concert artist, his fame would not outlive him. For that very reason Rubinstein wished passionately to succeed as a composer. By early June 1873 Rubinstein was back in Europe. He stopped brie®y in London , Paris, and Leipzig for discussions about the publication of his works. “Here I am again safely arrived in Europe,”he wrote to Kaleriya Khristoforovna. “I am hurrying to St. Petersburg and hope to arrive there on 12 [June].”1 After the exhausting schedule of his American concerts he was delighted to hear that an apartment was being made ready for him outside the city in Peterhof. The large sum of money raised by his concert tours now enabled him seriously to consider an ambition he had long cherished: acquiring a large villa that could accommodate his own growing family, as well as his mother and younger sister So¤ya. Before leaving for America, Rubinstein had signed a contract with the publisher Ricordi, indicating the terms under which his works would be published in Italy, and a performance of Feramors was to be scheduled for production at La Scala Milan. Details had been announced in Signale für die musikalische Welt and the same journal later reported that the libretto of the opera had been translated into Italian. By the end of October Rubinstein was resting on the shores of Lake Como, anticipating the start of his concert tour just four weeks later. Never having had the opportunity to visit Italy before, he used the time for sightseeing and for making a start on a new opera that he had discussed with Salomon Mosenthal. This was to be a reworking of the dramatic canvas by Otto Ludwig called Die Maccabäer. The action of Mosenthal’s libretto is based on books 1 and 2 of the Books of Maccabees, describing historical events during the Seleucid period of Greek rule over Judea by Syrian kings. In 167 bc King Antiochus Epiphanes IV began a campaign against the Jews, forcing them to abandon their customs and adopt Hellenistic practices. In the same year he invaded Jerusalem and erected a statue to Zeus in the temple. This sparked off a revolt by the priest Mattathias whose son, Judas Maccabeus, led a force to evict the Seleucids from the city. Italian Tour Rubinstein’s Italian tour began at the end of November. In Milan he was introduced to the Russian soprano Aleksandra Santagano-Gorchakova,who was later the teacher of the celebrated tenor Leonid Sobinov. During the 1870s and 1880s her opera troupe actively promoted Russian music in Italy, and she not only appeared as Antonida and Lyudmila in Glinka’s operas but also translated the texts of both operas into Italian. It was on her initiative that A Life for the Tsar was ¤rst produced in Milan in the spring of 1874. Quite clearly Rubinstein had no prior knowledge of this, and on 4 December he wrote impatiently to Bessel from Florence, asking him to ¤nd out the details from Dmitry Stasov: “Mme Gorchakova is making a fuss. Everyone is asking me questions, how, what, where, when . . . I don’t know anything. It seems to me...

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