Arts Entertainment Tchaikovsky C. V.• ff Zs1/4 ' , • BILL CARROLL Special to the Jewish News A Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky: The premiere of "Swan Lake" was a fiasco — poorly played and ill-directed "My own lake of Szvan.i.' is simply trash," Tchaikovsky said of his now-classic ballet. For once, he had misjudged a masterpiece. nton and Nicholas Rubinstein, well-known music teachers and composers in Russia, played influential roles in the career of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the most famous classical music composers of all time. The Detroit Opera House takes on a Tchaikovsky aura March 30-April 2, when the American Ballet Theatre presents his famous Swan Lake ballet to con- clude Michigan Opera Theatre's 1999-2000 DaimlerChrysler Dance Series. It marks the Detroit debut of an all-new production, which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the ABT. Swan Lake was regarded as a failure when it was first performed in Moscow in 1877, then hailed as a huge success when a re-choreographed version was staged in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1895 — two years after Tchaikovsky's death. The ABT made ballet history with a landmark full- length production of Swan Lake in 1967, and has added new choreography, sets and costumes. The cur- rent production premieres tonight (March 24) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. But if Tchaikovsky, who reluctantly studied law at first, hadn't rebelled against his family's wishes and showed the courage to study music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the world would have missed the numer- ous symphonies, concertos, operas and ballets composed over his 53 years. As a master of melody, Tchaikovsky's works, often reflecting his melancholy nature, also have provided tunes for many popular songs. The founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and one of Tchaikovsky's teachers there was Anton Rubinstein, a superb pianist and composer in his own right. He and his brother, Nicholas, who later established the Moscow Conservatory, were of German-Jewish extraction, causing many students to boycott those conservatories because of the ever present antisemitism of the period. Tchaikovsky, however, was enthralled with Anton Rubinstein, and was influenced by his teachings, later developing a lifelong "love-hate" relationship with him. Once when Rubinstein, his teacher of composition, asked for several variations, Tchaikovsky stayed up throughout the night and turned in 200 of them in the morning — transforming Russian folk tunes into waltzes, mazurkas and fugues. In later years, though, Rubinstein, for some unknown reason, helped block Tchaikovsky's request to have one of his new symphonies performed in St. Petersburg. Bill Carroll is a West Bloomfield-based freelance writer.