About the work
Opera in three acts (later with a prologue) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, his first completed opera and the first by the composers' circle known as 'The Mighty Handful', after Lev Mei's drama Pskovityanka. The composer wrote his own libretto; the premiere took place on 13 January 1873 under Eduard Nápravník at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Plot
Against the background of Tsar Ivan the Terrible's 1570 campaign, which laid waste to Novgorod but spared Pskov, the noblewoman's daughter Olga discovers that she is the tsar's illegitimate child. Her love for the rebel leader Mikhailo Tucha places her between family loyalty and political revolt; Olga dies in a clash between the rebels and the tsar's troops.
Cultural significance
Rimsky-Korsakov revised the work repeatedly: in 1876–77 with an initially unsuccessful prologue, in 1891–92 in a version that entered the repertoire after its 1895 Moscow premiere, and in 1901 with an aria written specifically for Feodor Chaliapin, sometimes performed under the title Ivan the Terrible. As the first opera of 'The Mighty Handful', it is often discussed alongside Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.