In 1849, the translator, poet and playwright Lev Mey (1822–1862) wrote a drama The Tsar’s Bride based on one of the passages from the era of Ivan the Terrible’s reign. In 1868, Mily Balakirev drew Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s attention to Mey’s work. However, the composer set to creating an opera based on the plot of The Tsar’s Bride only thirty years later. He began his
work in February 1898 and completed it in ten months. Almost without changing Mey’s plot, Rimsky-Korsakov enhanced the dramatic qualities of The Tsar’s Bride with his musical means.
The opera was premiered in the autumn of 1899 at a Moscow theatre of the industrialist and patron Savva Mamontov with Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov being the conductor.
The Tsar’s Bride, a sample of realistic drama, is one of the most popular works for musical theatre at the present time.
The performance of 1973 presented on these CDs brought together great artists of Russian stage – Evgeny Nesterenko, Galina Vishnevskaya, Vladimir Atlantov, Irina Arkhipova and others.
