Tchaikovsky
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Elizaveta Lavrovskaia

Elizaveta Andreevna Lavrovskaia (Елизавета Андреевна Лавровская) was a Russian opera singer (contralto), also known after her marriage as as Princess Tserteleva (Цертелева), born on 1/13 October 1845 at Kashin, near Tver.

After studying at the Elizavetskii Institute in Moscow, she graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1867, She sang with the Imperial Opera Company in Saint Petersburg from 1868 to 1872 and 1879 to 1880, and with the Bol'shoi Theatre in Moscow from 1890 to 1891. During the 1870s she studied with Pauline Viardot in Paris, and also toured widely in Western Europe.

She was also a professor at the Moscow Conservatory from 1888 until her death in 1919, and by marriage to Prince Petr Nikolaevich Tsertklev, an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, she became Princess Tserteleva, but retained the surname Lavrovskaia for her musical career.

In 1877 she suggested the subject for Tchaikovsky's opera Evgenii Onegin, and she was one of the two soloists at the premiere of his coronation cantata Moscow in 1883. The composer dedicated to her his set of Six Romances and Songs, Op. 27 (1875) and the vocal quartet Night (1893).

Elizaveta Lavrovskaia died in Petrograd on 4 February 1919, aged 73.