_The Legend of Tsar Saltan, of his Son the famous and doughty Warrior, Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the beautiful Tsarevna Liebed_ (the Swan-queen), an opera in four acts with a Prologue, the libretto drawn from Poushkin's poem of the same title, was produced by the Private Opera Company in Moscow in December 1906. Previously to the first performance of the work, an orchestral suite consisting of three of the entr'actes was played in St. Petersburg at one of the concerts of the I. R. M. S. The work follows the model of _Sadko_ rather than that of purely lyrical operas. Here Rimsky-Korsakov makes a more extended and systematic use of the _leitmotif_. The leading characters, Saltan, Militrissa, Tsarevna Liebed and the Sea Rovers, have their characteristic themes, but a number of minor motives are used in connection with particular sentiments and even to represent various natural objects. The story, which is too long to give in all its details, deals with the adventures of Tsar Saltan and the Three Sisters; the two elders--recalling the story of Cinderella--are jealous of the youngest Militrissa who marries the Tsar's son, and during Saltan's absence from home they revenge themselves upon her by sending a false message announcing that she has borne her husband a daughter instead of a son. The tale offers a strange mixture of the fantastic and the realistic. The opera is remarkable for its fine orchestral numbers and the novelty and brilliancy of its instrumentation, and for the free use of folk melodies.[49]