About the work
Unfinished juvenile opera in four acts that Sergei Prokofiev composed between 1904 and 1907, based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's tale "Undine" (1811), with a libretto by A. M. Kilštedt. No premiere is recorded; of the score only the piano manuscript of the second and third acts survives.
Plot
The opera follows the plot of Fouqué's water-spirit tale: the nymph Undine gains a human soul through a knight's love, but must let him pay with his life after he breaks faith with her. How Prokofiev and librettist Kilštedt specifically adapted this material can no longer be reconstructed in detail from the surviving sources.
Cultural significance
Undine ranks among Prokofiev's earliest works for the stage, alongside operas such as The Giant (1900) and A Feast in Time of Plague (1903), and shows his pronounced affinity for opera from adolescence onward. The unfinished work was never performed in the composer's lifetime and remains a little-known juvenile piece.