Andre Tchaikowsky Merchant of Venice

Composer André Tchaikowsky first made his mark in Great Britain as a concert pianist. Despite his immense success, Tchaikowsky's real passion was for composition. ""The Merchant of Venice"", after William Shakespeare's play of that name, was to remain his only opera. The score is intricate and dark, with moments of both brutality and lyricism, not to mention flashes of acerbic wit. It defies attribution to any one definite style of 20th-century compostion, intelligently drawing on Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy.