Tchaikovsky
www.tchaikovsky-research.net

Alina Ivanovna Briullova

Алина Ивановна Брюллова

Born Alina Ivanova MEYER (Мейер) in 1849. By her first marriage to the agriculturalist Herman Karlovich KONRADI (1833-1882), she had a deaf-mute son Nikolai, to whom Tchaikovsky's brother Modest became tutor in 1876.

The composer and his brother often stayed at the Konradis' estate at Grankino, and knew the family well, although relations with Alina became strained after she divored from her husband in 1881, and Modest was granted permanent guardianship of Nikolai the following year.

During the 1880s Alina married her second husband Vladimir Aleksandrovich BRIULLOV (1846-1918), the manager of the Russian National Museum.

Although Tchaikovsky's letters reveal that in private he found Alina a very "unsympathetic" person, for Nikolai and Modest's sake he concealed his misgivings, and in 1893 he even dedicated a piano piece - Echo rustique (No. 13 from the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72) - to her. She died in 1932, aged 83.