Rimsky-Korsakow, Nikolai

Rimsky-Korsakow, Nikolai – Kaschtschei der Unsterbliche (Kashchey the Immortal)

(b. Tikhvin, 18 March 1844 – d. Lyubensk Manor near Luga, 21 June 1908)

full opera score with Russian, German and English libretto

Foreword
The legendary figure of Kashchey originates from Russian mythology. He is an ugly old man who threatens young women and hides his soul outside his body in a needle. This needle is in an egg, which is in a duck, which in turn is in a rabbit sitting in a wooden box buried under an oak tree on the island of Bujan, far out at sea.1 If you want to defeat Kashchey, you first have to reach his soul.1 This legendary figure plays a major role in the various versions of the legend of the ‘Firebird’, in the fairy tale ‘The Frog Queen’, in the Soviet fairy tale film ‘The Immortal Kashchey’ from 1945 and in Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale opera ‘Kashchey the Immortal’.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was born on 18 March 1844 in Tikhvin near Novgorod (Russia) and died on 21 June 1908 at the Lyubensk estate, Luga (near Saint Petersburg). From 1856 to 1862, he completed his military and school education in the naval cadet corps in St Petersburg. There he also received piano lessons and focussed on his great field of interest: opera. In 1859, Théodore Camille became his piano teacher, who introduced him to the composers Mili Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837-1910) and César Cui (1835-1918). Rimsky-Korsakov now began to compose his first work, the Symphony in E flat minor and focussed on Russian folk music and old Russian traditions. Rimsky-Korsakov had already been appointed professor of instrumentation and composition at the Sank Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, and from 1874 to 1881 he was director of the Free School of Music and worked as a conductor and teacher. In 1904 he became an associate member of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. His students included Alexander Glazunov, Ottorino Respighi, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky.

His works include fifteen operas, programme music, choral and chamber works, piano music, songs, transcriptions and orchestrations. His better-known operas include ‘Maskaja notsch’ (‘Mainacht’, 1878-1879), ‘Snegurotschka’ (‘Snowflake’, 1880-81), “Sadko” (1895-96), ‘Zarskaja newesta’ (‘The Tsar’s Bride’, 1898), ‘Skaska o zare Saltane’ (‘The Tale of Tsar Saltan’, 1899-1900) and ‘Kashtschei bessmertny’ (‘Kashchey the Immortal’, 1901-1902).2

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