the time had not yet come for this ambitious project to be implemented, but

essentially it laid the foundations for the future conservatory, which came into
being just ten years later.
At the start of 1853 St. Petersburg was gripped with excitement. After an interval of seven years, Pauline Viardot had returned to Russia and was to appear as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Seviglia. Everyone in St. Petersburg was talking
about it, but this did not discourage Rubinstein from giving a public concert
at Lichtenthal Hall. On 10/22 January he appeared with the violinist Ludwig
Maurer and the cellist Carl Schuberth in a program that included his own Cello
Sonata, Op. 18, the Violin Sonata, Op.19, and the Piano Trio, Op. 15.46 Two days
later he reported to his mother: Only now am I writing to you, as I wanted to
wait for my concert so as to tell you the results. On this occasion, even more
than usual, there were more honors than money since the success was brilliant
but the takings were poor.47
Meanwhile, Rubinstein had continued working on the operas which the
grand duchess had commissioned from him: Sibirskiye okhotniki [The Siberian
hunters] had been completed, Mest [Vengeance] (the opera based on Hadji
Abrek) was nished except for the overture. A third opera had already been envisaged and was to be completed in time for Lent. These three operas were to
be in different styles: The Siberian Hunters was to be a romantic opera; Vengeance, a tragic opera; and Fomka Durachok [Fomka the fool], a comic opera.
The grand duchess intended the operas to reect the various nationalities of the
Russian EmpireSiberia, Georgia, and Great Russiaand they were to be performed together in a single evening.
On 3/15 February Rubinstein wrote to Kaleriya Khristoforovna to say that
the plan to perform Vengeance at the grand duchesss Mikhaylovsky Palace had
proved disastrous, and his idea of a music academy had not been received favorably: it was sleeping the sleep of the righteous.48 In his personal life things
were also going badly, for he had become enamored of the singer Anna Karlovna
Fridberg (more often her name is given as Mlle Anne de Friedebourg), a pupil
of Pauline Viardot who had appeared with him during soires at the Mikhaylovsky Palace. It was to her Rubinstein dedicated the twenty-second piece of
the cycle Kamenny Ostrov, which subsequently came to be known as Rve
anglique. Their liaison, however, was not destined to blossom, for, as Rubinstein declared to Kaleriya Khristoforovna, I cannot have that which I ought to
have. 49 Some time later he actually proposed to her, but three years later, on
16 February 1856, she married Theodor Leschetizky. Anne is characterized by
Aniela Potocka in her biography of Leschetizky as: Always graceful, but always
cold, she was not made to create happiness around her. She was one of those
natures that by mere force of passivity inict suffering they apparently cannot
understand. 50 Fridebourg served as one of Yelena Pavlovnas ladies-in-waiting
and the active interest the latter took in the social attachments formed by the
members of her entourage may have played an important part in Rubinsteins
rebuff. It is true, God created the world from nothing, but he did not leave
to people the secret how to do it. This is the cause of my eternal disgureReturn to Russia and First Opera 39