Zhenitba

Zhenitba (Russian: Женитьба, Zhenit'ba, Marriage) is an unfinished opera begun in 1868 by Modest Mussorgsky to his own libretto based on Nikolai Gogol's comedy Marriage. This 1842 play is a satire of courtship and cowardice, which centres on a young woman, Agafya, who is wooed by four bachelors, each with his own idiosyncrasies.

The idea to set Gogol's Marriage to music came from the advice and influence of Alexander Dargomyzhsky, who began to compose his own experimental opera, The Stone Guest, to Alexander Pushkin's tragedy just two years earlier (in 1866). Dargomyzhsky declared that the text would be set "just as it stands, so that the inner truth of the text should not be distorted", and in a manner that abolished the 'unrealistic' division between aria and recitative in favour of a continuous mode of syllabic but lyrically heightened declamation somewhere between the two.

In 1868, Mussorgsky rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Zhenitba, with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. Mussorgsky's aim was to create individual musical signatures for each character using the natural rhythms of the text. The composer noted:

The first act was completed in 1868 in a vocal score and the composer noted:

The score is inscribed with the following details: "The work began on Tuesday, June 11, 1868 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and was finished on Tuesday, July 8, 1868 in the village Shilovo, Tula Oblast."

The Marriage was one of Mussorgsky's first musical masterpieces. It was an experiment in Russian opera, using grotesque and satirical musical language. One citic commented:

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