Tchaikovsky
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Emiliia Karlovna Pavlovskaia

Эмилия Карловна Павловская

Singer (soprano) and friend of the composer. Born Emiliia Karlovna BERMAN (Берман) on 28 July/9 Auguat 1853 in Saint Petersburg..

After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1873, where she was a student in Professor Camillo Everardi's singing class, she toured Italy and other western European countries. Between 1876 and 1883 she sang in the operatic theatres in Kiev, Odessa, Tifls and Khar'kov. In the 1883/84 and 1888/89 seasons she was an artist at the Bol'shoi Theatre in Moscow, and spent the intervening years at the Mariinskii Theatre in Saint Petersburg.

Tchaikovsky was impressed when he heard Pavlovskaia for the first time in La Traviate at the Kiev Opera, After being introduced to her during rehearsals of his opera Mazepa, Tschaikovsky came to regard her as an exceptionally talented opera artiste, clever, gifted, and best exponent of the roles of Tatiana in Evgenii Onegin, and Mariia in Mazepa. Emiliia Pavlovskaia premiered the role of Mariia in the latter opera in 1884, as well as the that of Kuma in The Enchantress (1887). Tchaikovsky dedicated his song "Do not ask" (No. 3 of the Six Romances, Op. 57) to her.

Emiliia Pavlovskaia's later years were spent as a teacher. She died in Moscow on 23 March 1935, aged 81.