The Snow Maiden

Composer: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Nikolai
  • Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden), a “Springtime Tale,” was composed in 1880-81 and premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in a very successful 1882 production.1
  • The opera was based on a verse play by Aleksandr Ostrovsky, which featured many passages inspired by the style of folk song texts.2
    • Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for the first production of this play in 1873.3
  • Rimsky-Korsakov worked on this opera during a particularly happy summer of 1880, when he and his wife were on vacation in a country house in a Russian village.4
    • R.-K. said that the atmosphere and natural surroundings of the village were “in harmony with my pantheistic mood at the time, and with my fascination in the Snow Maiden plot” (from R.-K.’s Chronicle of My Musical Life).
  • Story: The Snow Maiden is a supernatural figure, the daughter of the Frost and the Spring. The Snow Maiden goes to live among humans to learn how to fall in love. The story is also an allegorical tale of the winter’s transformation into spring.5

The Dance of the Tumblers

  • This movement, the “Dance of the Skomorkhi,” also known as the “Dance of the Buffoons,” takes place during a celebration in the presence of the Tsar, who has created a competition to see who can make the Snow Maiden fall in love. The music is based on a Slavic folk tune.6

Sources

  1.  Marina Frolova-Walker, Mark Humphreys, Lyle Neff, Rita McAllister, Iosif Genrikhovich Rayskin, and Detlef Gojowy, “Rimsky-Korsakov family,” Grove Music Online (2001), January 8, 2020, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052074.
  2. Ibid.
  3.  “The Snow Maiden,” Tchaikovsky Research, accessed January 8, 2020, http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/The_Snow_Maiden.
  4. Frolova-Walker et al, “Rimsky-Korsakov family,” Grove Music Online.
  5. Richard Taruskin, “Snow Maiden, The,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed January 8, 2020,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000009827. 
  6. Ibid.

Cut IDs

18041 21271