Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact, a podcast bringing you queer history from around the world and throughout time.

I'm Irene.

I'm Alice.

And I'm Eli.

And today we're going to be talking about the 19th century Russian composer, Piotr Ilyat Tchaikovsky.

Before we get going, I have a few things to say.

Firstly, content warnings. This episode will contain mentions of suicide, relationships between adults and adolescents,

and period-typical homophobia, both societal and internalized

homophobia from Piotr himself.

It also contains a cholera pandemic, death by cholera, and just general discussions of pandemic,

which are currently a sensitive topic.

So look after yourselves.

This is the first of two episodes on Tchaikovsky,

who just did a lot of things in his life. We'll be bringing out the second part on February

15th, so in two weeks' time. And before we start, I'd like to thank, firstly, all the people

who have suggested Tchaikovsky over the years. He is our most popular suggestion at the moment.

And secondly, all of our patrons who voted on the poll for this episode. I also just want to make a

quick note about dates. Between now and the 19th century, Russia has changed their calendar. I've chosen

to use the old dates. It just made more sense to me to use

the dates that, like, Chikovsky was mentioning his letters and things like that, then update

anything by like 14 days or whatever it was. So I feel like this was on the 7th of November.

That wouldn't have been the 7th of November, like, in Australia, but that was the 7th November

...