About the work
An unfinished opera by Modest Mussorgsky based on Gustave Flaubert's novel Salammbô (1862), for which he also wrote the libretto. He worked on it from 1863 to 1866, composing six numbers in varying states of completion before abandoning the project.
Plot
In third-century BC Carthage, the mercenary leader Mathô steals the sacred veil of the goddess Tanit. Salammbô, daughter of the general Hamilcar and priestess of the goddess, infiltrates Mathô's camp, seduces him and recovers the veil; in the end she marries the Numidian prince Narr'Havas while Mathô is captured and executed at her feet.
Cultural significance
Because Mussorgsky never completed the work, it remained known chiefly as a fragment for a long time, and he later reused parts of the music in Boris Godunov. The conductor Zoltán Peskó eventually reconstructed and orchestrated the surviving material, leading its concert premiere in Milan on 10 November 1980 and its first staged production in Naples on 29 March 1983.