Alexander Dargomyzhsky – Mermaid (Rusalka) [1948]

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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