Another musician who is clearly influenced by Tchaikovsky is Michael Ippolitov-Ivanov (b. 1859), a distinguished pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. He was afterwards appointed Director of the School of Music, and of the Opera, at Tiflis in the Caucasus, where his first opera _Ruth_ was produced in 1887. In 1893 he accepted a professorship at the Moscow Conservatoire, and became conductor of the Private Opera Company. Ippolitov-Ivanov is a great connoisseur of the music of the Caucasian races, and also of the old Hebrew melodies. He makes good use of the latter in _Ruth_, a graceful, idyllic opera, the libretto of which does not keep very strictly to Biblical traditions. In 1900 Ippolitov-Ivanov's second opera _Assya_--the libretto borrowed from Tourgeniev's tale which bears the same title--was produced in Moscow by the Private Opera Company. The tender melancholy sentiment of the music reflects the influence of Tchaikovsky's _Eugene Oniegin_; but by way of contrast there are some lively scenes from German student life. With the foregoing composers we may link the name of Vassily Sergeivich Kalinnikov (1866-1900), who is known in this country by his Symphonies in G minor and A major. He composed incidental music to Count Alexis Tolstoy's play "Tsar Boris" (Little Theatre, Moscow, 1897) and the Prologue to an opera entitled _The Year 1812_, which was never finished in consequence of the musician's failing health and untimely death. Kalinnikov hardly had time to outgrow his early phase of Tchaikovsky worship.