00. Overture
01. Act I. Miller – aria
02. Natasha Miller  Prince – terzetto
03. Peasants – chorus
04. Prince Natasha – duet
05. Miller Natasha – duet
06. Finale
07. Act II. Chorus
08. Princess and Prine – aria – duet
09. Recitative and Wedding – chorus
10. Slavonic dance
11. Gypsy dance
12. Finale
13. Act III. Princess – prelude and aria
14. Olga - song
15. Chorus of Mermaids
16. Prince – cavatina
17. Prince Miller – duet
18. Act IV. Mermaids dances
19. Mermaid – aria
20. Finale

The miller                                     Alexander Pirogov
Natasha / his daughter, later Mermaid          Evgeniya Smolenskaya
Prince / lover of Natasha                      Vitaly Kilchevsky
Prince fiance / later Princess                 Varvara Gagarina
Olga / princess friend                         Natalia Sokolova
The Angel                                      Elena Gribova
Huntsman                                       Mikhail Skazin
Little mermaid / Natasha's daughter            Nina Hagenberger
Matchmaker                                     Ivan Skobtsov

Chorus And Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow
Vassily Nebolsin - conductor

Recorded in Moscow 1948

Alexander Dargomyzhsky entered the history of Russian music as one of the founders of realistic art. His operas are distinguished with the finesse with which he personified human characters. His songs are an evidence of the artist' power of observation and skillful psychological analysis. The ideological and esthetic principles of the "great teacher of musical truth," as Modest Mussorgsky called Dargomyzhsky, played a great role in the development of Russain music art.

Dargomyzhsky's realistic aspirations found their mature expression in his chamber vocal works of the second half of the 1840's and early 1850's, especially in his opera Rusalka (1855), which takes the central place in the composer's legacy. Rusalka was the first Russian opera based on a psychologically acute domestic drama.

Dargomyzhsky had a plot of Rusalka inspired by Pushkin's poem in the late 1840's. The first music sketches date back from 1848. In the spring of 1855, the opera was completed. A year later, on May 4 (16), 1865, it was premiered in St. Petersburg on the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.

The leading music critics represented by Alexander Serov and César Cui welcomed the opera, but it was generally recognized in 1865. When the opera was re-staged in St. Petersburg, it was given an enthusiastic welcome by the new audience – democratically oriented intellectuals. Dargomyzhsky had left most of Pushkin's text untouched. --- music.douban.com

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01. From a Far Away Country  (Из страны, страны далекой) 1:33
02. Where Is Our Rose ? (Где наша роза) 2:01
03. Raven Flies To Raven (Ворон к ворону летит) 1:02
04. Come To Me (Приди ко мне) 2:03
05. Beautiful Summer (Вянет, вянет лето красно) 2:35 
06. Mary (Пью за здравие Мери) 1:02
07. In the Wild North (На севере диком) 2:05
08. On The Calm Waves (По волнам спокойным) 1:26
09. The Midnight Wood Goblin (В полночь леший) 1:26
10. Beautyful Day (Прекрасный день, счастливый день) 2:21
11. The Storm Cover The Skay (Буря мглою небо кроет) 3:05
12. They Say There Is The Country (Говорят, есть страна) 1:17
13. Was has the voice of cheer stopped? (Что смолкнул веселия глас) 2:20

St. Petersburg Choir
Klavdia Ptitsa – Choir Master

Alexander Dargomizhsky was born in dramatic circumstances on one of the estates of his father, a wealthy landowner in the Smolensk area, as the family had fled there to avoid the invading French Army under Napoleon. His mother was a minor poetess named Princess Kozlovskaya who disliked music. Nevertheless, three of her children had musical careers.

As a boy he had many ailments and did not speak until he was five years old. He received the ordinary training of a young aristocratic youth, including music lessons. He was much in demand as a pianist in society gatherings. He also studied violin, but apparently never mastered intonation (according to his violinist brother, Viktor).

He became a government official in 1827 and was promoted regularly. After he met Mikhail Glinka he decided to make music his vocation and studied harmony and composition by borrowing Glinka's notebooks from his studies in Berlin. He became interested in opera. After giving up his first project, he completed Esmeralda, based on Victor Hugo, by 1841. It was not produced until 1849, and while admired for its choral scenes, it was revived in 1851, but not restaged for another 50 years, and has never caught on. It is in a French grand opera fashion that already was outdated by then.

He wrote a large number of songs, mostly for female voice, and many of these became popular. He resigned his government position and went abroad. He came back with a new nationalistic feeling and started studying Russia's folk music and its typical speech intonations, imitating these in his music. His opera Rusalka, finished in 1855, is a result of this interest; it is written in a new, natural declamatory style. He wrote a famous article decrying the Italian-style interest in "melodies flattering to the ear" and proclaimed the ideal of expressing the word "directly" and truthfully.

This led to his composition of The Stone Guest, a nearly direct, word-for-word setting of Pushkin's play. It was written in continuous melodic recitative, with a accompaniment mainly of chords. In 1867 he was elected president of the Russian Musical Society. The duties of that position and his frail health did not permit him to finish The Stone Guest. The few remaining portions of the vocal score were completed by César Cui and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov. It has never been a theatrical success; only Rusalka is staged with any regularity, even in Russia.

Dargomizhsky's main musical legacy, therefore, is his songs, along with a few orchestral and instrumental pieces. It is his ideas about musical drama that give him an important position in Russian music, and his finding and setting folk tunes. This directly influenced Mussorgsky, who used natural Russian declamation in his operas, and through him later Russian composers, especially Shostakovich and Britten (whose operatic career was given inspiration by Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District) and Janácek. Outside of Russia, where he is regarded as an important composer in his own right, he is mainly valued for these influences. --- Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

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