About the work
Opera in one act by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, grown out of material that had occupied him for over thirty years in connection with The Maid of Pskov. An initial prologue composed in 1876–77 after the first act of Lev Mei's drama Pskovityanka he dismissed as 'long and heavy', rewriting it entirely in 1898; the independent premiere took place on 27 December 1898 at the Solodovnikov Theatre in Moscow and was considered a success.
Plot
Vera Sheloga confesses to her sister Nadezhda that her newborn daughter is not the child of her absent husband Ivan Sheloga but of a stranger she met while travelling. When her husband returns unexpectedly and questions the child's paternity, Nadezhda spontaneously claims to be the mother – the girl later becomes Olga, Ivan the Terrible's daughter and the heroine of The Maid of Pskov.
Cultural significance
Between 1901 and 1903 the work served as a prologue to The Maid of Pskov but was later detached again, since the larger opera worked perfectly well without it. In the West it remained a rarity until a 1978 staging; it shows how Rimsky-Korsakov could turn discarded material into an independent, viable work.