London – A new music-drama combining theatre, live piano and ballet explores the private conflicts behind some of Tchaikovsky’s most enduring music.
The life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky will be reimagined through theatre, music and dance when Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass receives its UK premiere at Opera Holland Park from 13 to 15 August.
Rather than offering a conventional composer biopic, the production looks behind Tchaikovsky’s celebrated public career to explore the conflict between his private identity and the restrictive society in which he lived.
Written and directed by RPS-nominated playwright Tama Matheson, Child of Glass examines Tchaikovsky’s struggle for self-expression at a time when homosexuality was condemned and could carry profound personal and social consequences. His music becomes both a refuge and a means of expressing feelings that could not safely be articulated elsewhere.
At the centre of the production is a paradox: the emotional turmoil that destabilised Tchaikovsky’s private life also helped fuel the music that would make him one of the most celebrated composers of the 19th century.
Matheson has spent much of the past decade developing a theatrical form in which the lives of composers and other historical figures are explored alongside their music. His previous collaboration with pianist Jayson Gillham, Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven, was staged at Opera Holland Park last summer and has since gone on to international performances.
For Child of Glass, the format expands further. Gillham performs newly arranged versions of Tchaikovsky’s music for solo piano, while former Royal Ballet dancer Stephen Wicks provides the choreography.
Royal Ballet dancer Téo Dubreuil adds a physical dimension to Tchaikovsky’s story, with dance becoming another language through which the production explores the composer’s inner world. Actors Suzy Kohane and Oliver Holland appear alongside Matheson.
“Over the past decade, I’ve been evolving the artistic line of enquiry of what happens at the fusion of drama and music when you mix the biography of great historical figures with the music of their era,” Matheson says. “Tchaikovsky’s story may just be the most powerful yet.”
The production arrives in London following its world premiere in Australia with Brisbane Camerata and has already been shortlisted for an RPS Storytelling Award.
Gillham, who serves as both musical director and pianist, has performed with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra and ensembles across Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Matheson, meanwhile, has created more than ten music plays exploring figures including Beethoven, Bach, Britten, Prokofiev and Mahler.
By bringing together spoken drama, Tchaikovsky’s music and ballet, Child of Glass sets out to consider not simply how the composer lived, but the relationship between the life he was forced to conceal and the emotional openness of the music he left behind.
Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass runs at Opera Holland Park, Ilchester Place, London, from 13–15 August 2026 at 7.30pm. Tickets start from £35.
