August 20, 1882: The 1812 Overture, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, makes its public premiere at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, Russia.
Tchaikovsky, then 42 years old, did not conduct the work himself. Instead, the conductor was Ippolit Al'tani, a violinist and choirmaster who was the leading conductor in the Russian Empire at the time.
Tchiakovsky had already composed Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1875 and Swan Lake in 1876, and would compose The Nutcracker in 1892. And he wasn't the 1st Russian to turn the failed French expedition in Russia into great art: Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace in 1869.
Written in the key of E-flat major, the Overture is a 15-minute work based on the invasion of Russia by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France and his seemingly invincible Grande Armée in 1812. On September 7, at Borodino, 75 miles west of Moscow, General Mikhail Kutuzov took a stand with his forces. Kutuzov finally had to retreat, but not before both sides had lost about 40,000 men -- one-quarter of the Russian force, one-fifth of the combined French, Polish, Italian and German force.
With considerably fewer resources, and his supply lines stretched too far, Napoleon took his men into Moscow. But Czar Alexander I had had the city evacuated. The Mayor of Moscow, Count Fyodor Rostopchin, stayed behind, and burned the city, hoping to take more of Napoleon's men in the fire; or, failing that, leaving them with nothing to claim, as the Russian capital was still St. Petersburg, to the north.
Napoleon couldn't even set up camp in the ruined city, as there wasn't sufficient food to feed his army. So he retreated on October 19, and was unable to escape the miserably cold Russian Winter, or the ravaging of his men by disease and hunger, or Cossacks launching what would later be called guerilla attacks. By the time the Grande Armée reached Poland -- friendly to him because Russia was a common enemy -- it was one-tenth the size he started with. One thing led to another, and Napoleon fell from power in 1814.
He was exiled to Elba, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, but in 1815, he escaped, returned to France, rebuilt his army, and resumed his threat. On June 18, 1815, at Waterloo, Belgium, he was defeated by a combined British-Prussian-Austrian force, although the British commander, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, admitted it was "a near-run thing." This time, Napoleon was exiled to the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, far from any civilization, and better-guarded. He died there on May 5, 1821, of stomach cancer, at the age of 51.
Throwing their largest city away to save their country was Russia's favorite, if not "greatest," military victory until "The Great Patriotic War" -- their name for World War II. In 1869, Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace, perhaps the country's greatest novel, about Russia in the Napoleonic period.
Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a piece for the opening of the Cathedral, itself dedicated to the memory of those lost in the war. It had been 70 years since the battle, and it would be the last major gathering of veterans of the war. With its appropriation of La Marseillaise (itself a swipe at Napoleon, as he had banned it in 1805, and it had been reinstated as France's national anthem only in 1879), and the cannons at its conclusion, the Overture was a huge success.
In 1974, Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops, began the tradition of the Pops playing the Overture at the Hatch Memorial Shell on the Esplanade on the Charles River every 4th of July. While the piece has nothing to do with America, which was involved in its own struggle for survival in 1812, the cannon fire goes well with the fireworks that are shot off. (The Pops' 4th of July show is always closed with John Philip Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever.)
The Overture was also notably used at both the beginning and the end of the 2005 film V for Vendetta, for the film's dystopian future depiction of the destruction of London's Old Bailey and Palace of Westminster, respectively.
The Cathedral of Christ the Savior was brand-new when the Overture premiered. Joseph Stalin had it destroyed in 1931. For the site, he had planned a Palace of the Soviets, a new national capital building. It was supposed to rise to 1,365 feet, making it the tallest building in the world at the time. (For the sake of perspective, the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center were 1,368 and 1,362 feet.) Construction began in 1937, and the foundation was completed in 1939.
But the Nazis destroyed what had been built by 1941. After World War II, Stalin lost interest in the project, and construction was never restarted. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a replacement Cathedral was planned, and it opened in 2000.
Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791, and Ludwig van Beethoven in 1827. (Beethoven's 5th Symphony premiered in 1808, his 9th in 1824.) So their works precede professional sports, thus preventing any chance at a "Scores On This Historic Day" post for the premieres of any of their notable works. (UPDATE: I have since improvised, doing a profile of Mozart for a post on the 1984 premiere of the film Amadeus. I have not yet done anything for Bach or Beethoven, though.)
Tchaikovsky died on November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg, Russia, 9 days after conducting the premiere of his 6th Symphony there. He was 53, and the cause is in dispute. There was a cholera outbreak, and he may have drunk tainted water. Whether this was an accident or suicide is also unsure. He was also a prodigious consumer of tobacco and alcohol.
In a 2011 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Napoleon Bonaparte, against "Nice" Peter Shukoff as the fictional character Napoleon Dynamite. The joke was that Lloyd is just 5-foot-6, like Napoleon. However, 5-foot-6 was not considered especially short at the time, and the idea that Napoleon was short is now considered to have been British propaganda.
UPDATE: In 2025, Napoleon became only the 2nd ERB character, after Donald Trump, to be played by both Peter and Lloyd. Peter played him against Lloyd's portrayal of medieval French king Charlemagne.
*
August 20, 1882 was a Sunday. The National League then forbade playing games on Sunday. That season, the American Association was founded, and it allowed games on Sunday -- because, the American labor movement then being what it was, it was the one day of the week when most people didn't have to work, thus making higher attendances possible. So the only 2 games played that day were in the AA:
* The Pittsburgh Alleghenys beat the Louisville Eclipse, 3-1 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. Within a few years, the Alleghenys would acquire a player in a move that was called "nothing but piratical," and, noting the alliteration, became the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1887, the Pirates joined the NL. In 1892, the Eclipse, by then known as the Louisville Colonels, also joined the NL. In 1899, the Eclipse were contracted out of the NL, and their assets, including star shortstop Honus Wagner, a Pittsburgh native, were bought by the Pirates.
* And the Philadelphia Athletics beat the St. Louis Brown Stockings, 10-5 at the original Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Both of these teams would later have teams in the American League named after them. But while these Athletics went out of business after the 1890 season, the Brown Stockings still exist. They were renamed the Browns in 1883, joined the NL in 1892, and were renamed the Cardinals in 1900.
