About the work
The Stone Guest is the last, unfinished opera by the Russian composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky, based word for word on Alexander Pushkin's 1830 "little tragedy" of the same name. Dargomyzhsky set Pushkin's text almost unchanged, dispensing with closed arias and choruses in favour of continuous, declamatory singing, a "melodic recitative". After his death in 1869, César Cui completed the final bars and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrated the score at Dargomyzhsky's request; the premiere took place on 16 February 1872 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Plot
Don Juan secretly returns from exile to Madrid and seduces Donna Anna, the widow of the Commander he once killed in a duel. On a reckless impulse he invites the Commander's statue to a nocturnal meeting at his grave. The stone statue duly appears, seizes Don Juan by the hand and drags him down into the abyss.
Cultural significance
With its continuous, text-faithful recitative style, the opera became a model for the group of composers known as "The Mighty Five"; Modest Mussorgsky called Dargomyzhsky "a great teacher of musical truth". Rimsky-Korsakov revised his orchestration again in 1903; that version, premiered in 1907 at the Bolshoi Theatre, is now considered the standard one.