Rimsky-Korsakov: Kashchey The Immortal

The album features a concert recording of the opera Kashchey the Immortal by Rimsky-Korsakov, recorded during the 2018 Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival.

In November 1900, music journalist Yevgeny Petrovsky suggested Rimsky- Korsakov his libretto entitled Prince Ivan, loosely based on Russian folk tales about a vile and ugly sorcerer. The composer, initially interested, finally rejected the text, discouraged by its incomprehensible symbolism. In the summer of the following year, the encounter with the score of Wagner's Siegfried, however, awakened in him fresh and innovative harmonic ideas, which he wanted to implement precisely in a work involving evil magic themes. With the help of his daughter Sofia, he created his own script based on Petrovsky's prototype, and already in the spring of 1902, a one-act opera in three scenes was ready, i.e. Kashchey the Deathless; still before the end of the year, it was successfully staged in Moscow.