Prisoner of the Caucasus (opera)

Prisoner of the Caucasus (Кавказский пленник in Cyrillic, Kavkazskij plennik in transliteration) is an opera in three acts, composed by César Cui. The libretto is credited to Viktor Krylov, and is based on Alexander Pushkin's poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus.

The English title has been rendered also as Prisoner in the Caucasus and The Captive in the Caucasus.

The opera was preceded on the Russian stage by choreographer Charles Didelot's ballet of 1825.

The opera was composed in three versions. The first, in 1857-1858, consisted of only two acts (which later became Acts I and III), but its staging was cancelled due to poor orchestration and insufficient length. Meanwhile the overture, orchestrated by Mily Balakirev, could be heard in concerts. Many years later, Cui decided to revise the two-act work: during 1881-1882 he added a new middle act (Act II) and another dance to Act III. This version constituted the score for the Russian premiere. In 1885, with the prospect of a Belgian production, he expanded the finale of Act II, creating the third version of the opera.

Prisoner of the Caucasus was premiered on 4 February 1883 (Old Style), at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg under the conductorship of Eduard Nápravník. This opera became the most widely performed of the composer's full-length operas. Its production in Liège in 1886 — made possible in no small way by the enthusiastic support of Cui's friend, La Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau — marked the first time that an opera by "The Mighty Handful" was performed in the West. Nevertheless, with this exception, the opera seems to have never been staged outside of Imperial Russia and to have fallen out of the repertory in Russia after the composer's death.

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