Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai

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Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai

Pskovityanka (The Maid of Pskov) First Version 1866-72 (Vocal score with Italian & English libretto)

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Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai – Pskovityanka (The Maid of Pskov) First Version 1866-72 (Vocal score with Italian & English libretto)

Info about the work:

Hardly any composer revised his music as often, as rigorously, and over such a long period of time as Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and hardly any of his works bears witness to this urge to revise as eloquently as his opera Pskovityanka (“The Maid of Pskov”). This youthful outburst of Rimsky-Korsakov’s genius was originally conceived in 1868 as a full-length opera based on a historico-didactic play of the same name by Lev Alexandrovich Mey (1822-1862). The story of The Maid of Pskov, set in the sixteenth century in the days of Ivan the Terrible, is an attempt to answer the question: why did Ivan reduce the great trading city of Novgorod to ashes but spare the neighboring city of Pskov? The answer, according to Mey, is to be found in Olga, the eponymous “maid of Pskov,” who, it transpires, is Ivan’s illegitimate daughter. Faced with this fruit of an earlier love affair, the great Tsar spares the city, but not before several intrigues and insurrections have to be squelched and Olga herself perishes accidentally in the mêlée. Rimsky-Korsakov adopted the substance of Mey’s drama fairly intact for his opera libretto, but skipped the entire first act dealing with Ivan’s early love-affair and Olga’s conception. Instead, he began the opera at the point fifteen years later when Ivan’s armies, having sacked Novgorod and butchered its population, are advancing on Pskov. He then followed the play more or less closely, with several excisions, to its triumphant (for Ivan) conclusion. …

For more information about the piece read the complete English or German preface of the full score  > HERE

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