Biography
Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky was born in 1813 in the Tula Governorate and grew up in St Petersburg, where private tutors first taught him piano and violin. Meeting Mikhail Glinka in 1833 encouraged him to pursue composition; his opera Esmeralda, after Victor Hugo, was premiered in Moscow in 1847, followed by Rusalka (1856), based on Alexander Pushkin. In his late works, above all the unfinished opera The Stone Guest, he developed a continuous "melodic recitative" built on the declamation of Russian speech rather than closed arias. Dargomyzhsky died in St Petersburg in 1869; his style became a model for the group of composers known as "The Mighty Five", including Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin.
On Stagelog
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