Prince Igor

Prince Igor
Opera by Alexander Borodin
Title page of the published score. The text reads: "Prince Igor, opera in 4 acts with a prologue, words and music by A.P. Borodin, subject adapted from The Lay of Igor's Host."
Native title	Russian: Князь Игорь, Knyaz' Igor'
Librettist	Borodin
Language	Russian
Based on	The Lay of Igor's Host
Premiere	4 November 1890 (1890-11-04) Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg

Prince Igor (Russian: Князь Игорь, Knyaz' Igor') is an opera in four acts with a prologue, written and composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the Ancient Russian epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Rus' prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Cuman ("Polovtsian") tribes in 1185. He also incorporated material drawn from two medieval Kievan chronicles. The opera was left unfinished upon the composer's death in 1887 and was edited and completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov. It was first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1890.

Original Composition: 1869–1887

After briefly considering Lev Mei's The Tsar's Bride as a subject (later taken up in 1898 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, his 9th opera), Borodin began looking for a new project for his first opera. Vladimir Stasov, critic and advisor to The Mighty Handful, suggested The Lay of Igor's Host, a 12th-century epic prose poem, and sent Borodin a scenario for a three-act opera on 30 April 1869. Initially, Borodin found the proposition intriguing, but daunting:

Your outline is so complete that everything seems clear to me and suits me perfectly. But will I manage to carry out my own task to the end? Bah! As they say here, 'He who is afraid of the wolf doesn't go into the woods!' So I shall give it a try...

After collecting material from literary sources, Borodin began composition in September 1869 with initial versions of Yaroslavna's arioso and Konchakovna's cavatina, and sketched the Polovtsian Dances and March of the Polovtsy. He soon began to have doubts and ceased composing. He expressed his misgivings in a letter to his wife: "There is too little drama here, and no movement... To me, opera without drama, in the strict sense, is unnatural." This began a period of about four years in which he proceeded no further on Prince Igor, but began diverting materials for the opera into his other works, the Symphony No 2 in B minor (1869–76) and the collaborative opera-ballet Mlada (1872).