“I have been a week at Nice. It is most curious to come straight from the depths of a Russian winter to a climate where one can walk out without an overcoat, where orange trees, roses, and syringas are in full bloom, and the trees are in leaf. Nice is lovely. But the gay life is killing.... However, I have many pleasant hours; those, for instance, in the early morning, when I sit alone by the sea in the glowing--but not scorching--sunshine. But even these moments are not without a shade of melancholy. What comes of it all? I am old, and can enjoy nothing more. I live on my memories and my hopes. But what is there to hope for?
“Yet without hope in the future life is impossible. So I dream of coming to Kiev at Easter, and of spending part of the summer with you at Kamenka.”
By the end of January Tchaikovsky was back in Moscow.
In 1871 a great Polytechnic Exhibition was organised in this town in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great. The direction of the musical section was confided to Nicholas Rubinstein, but when he resigned, because his scheme was too costly to be sanctioned by the committee, the celebrated ‘cellist, K. Davidov, was invited to take his place. He accepted, and named Laroche and Balakirev as his coadjutors. Balakirev was not immediately disposed to undertake these duties, saying that he would first like to hear the opinion of Nicholas Rubinstein as to the part which the Petersburg musicians were to take in the matter. After two months of uncertainty, the committee decided to dispense with his reply, and invited Rimsky-Korsakov to take his place. At the same time Asantchevsky (then Director of the Petersburg Conservatoire), Wurm, and Leschetitzky were added to the musical committee.
This originally Muscovite committee, which ended in being made up of Petersburgers, decided among other projects to commission from Tchaikovsky a Festival Cantata, the text of which was to be specially written for the occasion by the poet Polonsky.
By the end of December, or the beginning of January, the libretto was finished. When Tchaikovsky undertook to do any work within a fixed limit of time, he always tried to complete it before the date of contract expired. On this occasion he was well beforehand with the work, and sent in the cantata to the committee by the 1st of April. As he had only received the words towards the end of January, after his return from Nice, he could not have had more than two months in which to complete this lengthy and complicated score.