“With regard to the love affair I had early in the winter, I may tell you that it is very doubtful whether I shall enter Hymen’s bonds or not. Things are beginning to go rather awry. I will tell you more about it later on. I have not time now.” During this month (January) Désirée Artôt, without a word of explanation to her first lover, was married to the baritone singer Padilla at Warsaw. The news reached Tchaikovsky at a moment when his whole mind, time, and interests were absorbed by the production of his first opera, and, judging from the tone of his letters, it was owing to these circumstances that it affected him less painfully than might have been expected. In any case, after the first hours of bitterness, Tchaikovsky bore no grudge against the faithless lady. She remained for him the most perfect artist he had ever known. As a woman she was always dear to his memory. A year later he had to meet her again, and wrote of the prospect as follows:-- “I shall have very shortly to meet Artôt. She is coming here, and I cannot avoid a meeting, because immediately after her arrival we begin the rehearsals for _Le Domino Noir_ (for which I have written recitatives and choruses), which I shall be compelled to attend. This woman has caused me to experience many bitter hours, and yet I am drawn to her by such an inexplicable sympathy that I begin to look forward to her coming with feverish impatience.” They met as friends. All intimate relations were at an end. “When, in 1869, Artôt reappeared at the Moscow Opera,” says Kashkin, “I sat in the stalls next to Tchaikovsky, who was greatly moved. When the singer came on, he held his opera glasses to his eyes and never lowered them during the entire performance; but he must have seen very little, for tear after tear rolled down his cheeks.” Twenty years later they met once more. Youthful love and mutual sympathy had then given place to a steady friendship, which lasted the rest of their lives. On January 30th (February 11th), 1869, _The Voyevode_ was given for the first time for the singer Menshikova’s benefit. The opera was very well received. The composer was recalled fifteen times and presented with a laurel wreath. The performance, however, was not without mishaps. Rapport, who took the lover’s part, had been kept awake all night by an abscess on his finger, and was nearly fainting. “If Menshikova had not supported him in her arms, the curtain must have been rung down,” wrote Tchaikovsky to his brothers. Kashkin says the chorus on a folksong, which occurred early in the opera, pleased at once, and the “Nightingale” song became a favourite. The tenor solo, “Glow, O Dawn-light,” based upon the pentatonic scale, and the duet between Olona and Maria, “The moon sails calmly,” and the last quartet all met with great success.