Polovtsian Dances (Prince Igor)

Vladimir Stasov proposed the twelfth-century Lay of Igor's Campaign as a subject in 1869. Borodin, a professor of chemistry who composed in whatever time remained, worked at the opera for eighteen years and left it unfinished at his death in 1887; Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov assembled and orchestrated a performable score, and the premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 4 November 1890. Because Borodin left no plan, the order of the scenes has been argued over ever since. The Polovtsian Dances entered concert programmes at once and are heard far more often than the opera itself.