About the work
Mavra is a comic opera in one act by Igor Stravinsky after Alexander Pushkin's verse tale 'The Little House in Kolomna', with a libretto by Boris Kochno. It is among the first stage works of his neoclassical period and is dedicated to Pushkin, Glinka and Tchaikovsky. The premiere took place on 3 June 1922 at the Paris Opéra, conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg and staged and choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Plot
To be near his beloved Parasha, the hussar Vasili disguises himself as a maid named Mavra and enters her mother's household. When the suspicious neighbour catches the supposed maid shaving, the disguise collapses and the turbulent comedy of mistaken identity ends abruptly.
Cultural significance
The work's intimate, chamber-scaled design felt lost in the vast Paris Opéra at its premiere, and Mavra initially failed there. Even so, as an early demonstration of Stravinsky's turn to older Russian opera traditions, it is now regarded as an important hinge on his path toward neoclassicism.