Tchaikovsky’s epic nationalist drama Mazeppa has its Met broadcast premiere this month. Does the opera offer clues about its composer’s own dark nights of the soul? GRANT HAYTER-MENZIES looks at the evidence.

[Opera News, 1 March 2006]

Mazeppa is, paradoxically, an opera rich with utter loss: a father loses a daughter, then his life; a woman loses her lover, then her reason; a patriot loses his country and the woman for whom he risked everything.