In the fall of 1900, the Russian composer Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov,having just completed The Tale of Tsar Saltan, working on the opera Servilia. Librettists prepared scripts for future works, including the operas "The Legend of the Invisible City of "and "Pan Voevoda".
At this time, the Russian music critic Evgeny Maksimovich Petrovsky appeared in the composer's house with a proposal to write a new opera based on his play "Ivan the King's Son". Here is how Nikolai Andreevich writes about this in the book "Chronicle of My Life": "One fine day, Ye came to see me.M. Petrovsky, N. F. Findeisen's collaborator on the publication of the Russian Musical Gazette, is an educated man, a good musician, a fine and witty music critic, and a great, irrevocable Wagnerist. He offered me a fantastic libretto written by him in four short pictures called "Kashchei the Immortal". The libretto interested me. I found it only too long in the last two pictures, and the poems didn't satisfy me. I expressed my doubts to Petrovsky, and after a while he presented me with another, more extensive treatment of this plot, which, however, I did not like at all."
According to Petrovsky, "my heart didn't want to argue with the author of Saltan," and he agreed to redo the text. However, the new version of the libretto did not suit the composer either: "I decided to write this small opera in 3 pictures without interrupting the music and started the libretto together with my daughter Sonya, with whom we started writing new poems together." This happened in the summer of 1901. In her memoirs, Sofya Nikolaevna Rimskaya-Korsakova says: "When Kashchei was being composed, I helped my father as much as I could in composing the libretto. Sometimes my dad would come up to me with his eyes burning: "Sofya, let's go, we need to talk." And we would go off into the woods with him, discussing versions of the fairy tale and working out the details. Dad enthusiastically walks with fathom steps through the swamp, through the dead wood. I can barely keep up with him in my thin shoes, clinging to branches… Dad doesn't notice anything… As a memento of this time, I was left with the keyboard "Kashchey" with the inscription "Sonya for everything".
Work on the opera progressed very quickly. The first one was fully completed, and a full sketch of the second picture was made. But now Petrovsky refused to continue editing the material. Work was interrupted again. It only resumed in the spring of 1902, when Rimsky-Korsakov finished the third picture of the opera.
The premiere of "Kashchei the Immortal" took place on December 12, 1902 at the Moscow Private Opera. It was performed on the same evening as Tchaikovsky's Iolanthe. At the conductor's desk was a wonderful Russian composer and conductor Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, who conveyed his feelings in this way: "The music of "Kashchey" was like an anaesthetic or an irritating too strong smell of flowers. Finishing a rehearsal or a performance of "Kashcheya", I felt somewhat excited, as if after taking a drug." Perhaps this was due to the famous "color hearing" of Rimsky-Korsakov, thanks to which the musical themes of the characters created by him seem to subconsciously affect the imagination of listeners.
After the premiere, Nikolai Andreevich wrote to Petrovsky: "Dear Evgeny Maksimovich, I sincerely thank you for your greeting on the occasion of the production of Kashchei in Moscow. The first performance was indeed a success; but it is already customary that the first performances of my operas always succeed, and therefore I do not believe in them (that is, in the first performances)... Many Moscow musicians see "Kashchey" as a new word. How far this is so, I do not undertake to judge; but if it is even partially so, and the new word really exists in it, then I owe this to the excellent plot and, consequently, entirely to you, Evgeny Maksimovich. The changes that I made to it, contrary to your original plan, are not significant. The essence is yours, and I remain grateful to you for it. " N. Rimsky-Korsakov, December 22, 1902, St. Petersburg.
The opera "Kashchei the Immortal" was never just an "autumn fairy tale". Each of the characters carried the symbolism of events taking place in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kashchei was considered the personification of autocracy, Tempest-hero-revolution, in the image of the Princess represented Russia.
On March 27, 1905, the premiere of "Kashchei the Immortal" performed by students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory took place at the V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Theater in St. Petersburg. Four days earlier, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, a professor at the Conservatory, was dismissed by the directorate for sympathizing with students participating in the revolutionary unrest. "To top it all off, the students started an opera performance at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater, which was supposed to consist of my "Kashchei" and the concert department. "Kashchey" was learned very nicely under the control of Glazunov. At the end of "Kashchei", something unprecedented happened: I was summoned and began to read me addresses from various societies and unions and make incendiary speeches. They say that someone shouted from above "down with autocracy". The noise and uproar were indescribable after each address and speech. The police ordered the iron curtain to be lowered and thus stopped further investigation. The concert section did not take place." N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov "Chronicle of my Life". After some time, Nikolai Andreevich returned to the conservatory, but never took part in political events.
