About this edition
Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka stands among the foundational works of Russian opera, a folk tragedy that helped move the genre beyond the reach of Italian and French convention toward a musical language rooted in Russian speech and feeling. Adapted from Pushkin's unfinished dramatic poem, the opera tells of Natasha, a miller's daughter abandoned by her princely lover, who drowns herself in the Dnieper and returns years later as a vengeful water spirit to draw him to his own watery end. Its most celebrated scene — the Miller's harrowing descent into madness after his daughter's death — is widely regarded as an early landmark of Russian musical realism, a style of character-drawn declamation that left a lasting mark on Mussorgsky and the generation of composers who followed.
This edition reproduces the full orchestral score published in Moscow by A. Gutheil, undated but datable to circa 1875 (plate A. 2481 G.). Gutheil was one of the leading Russian music publishing houses of the later nineteenth century, prized for the care and completeness of its engraved full scores of the core Russian repertoire. For many years, editions such as this one served as the principal printed source through which conductors, scholars, and orchestras encountered Dargomyzhsky's orchestration, and the Gutheil score remains an important historical reference point for the study and performance of Rusalka today.
About this edition:
- Full orchestral score (complete conducting score)
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
- Reproduced from a historical public domain edition
- Published by Purple 4R Publishing
Because this Gutheil edition of Rusalka has long since entered the public domain, we're glad to bring it back into print — an easy, affordable way for conductors, orchestral musicians, students, and scholars to hold Dargomyzhsky's landmark opera in hand.