_Kastchei the Immortal_ is described as "a legend of the autumn" in one act and three scenes, with uninterrupted music throughout. The sketch of the libretto was given to the composer by E. M. Petrovsky and is a free adaptation of a very old fairy tale. The opera was produced by the Private Opera Company in Moscow in 1902, and aroused a good deal of comment in consequence of several new procedures on the part of the composer, revealing a more decisive tendency to follow in the steps of Wagner. The charge of imitation is based upon the use of _leitmotifs_ and also upon the content of the libretto, in which, as in many of Wagner's operas, the idea of redemption plays a prominent part. Kastcheievna, the daughter of the wicked wizard Kastchei, is redeemed by intense suffering from her own jealous fury, when she lets fall a tear, in the crystal sphere of which Kastchei has enclosed his own fate. But Rimsky-Korsakov does not give us merely an internal drama in the Wagnerian sense, for we see enacted upon the stage the wholly external drama of the rescue of the unhappy Tsarevna, spell-bound by the evil Kastchei, at the hands of Ivan Korolevich. The opera ends with the downfall of the barriers which shut out the gloomy, autumnal, sin-oppressed kingdom of Kastchei from the happier world outside. "This symbolism," says Cheshikin, "may be taken in its widest acceptation; but in anything which is freed from a despotic power, our public is prepared to see a social tendency which is to their taste and they applaud it with satisfaction." _Kastchei_ chanced to be the opera which was represented in St. Petersburg (in March, 1905) at the moment when Rimsky-Korsakov was expelled from his professorship at the Conservatoire in consequence of his frank criticisms of the existing bureaucracy, and each representation was made the occasion of an ovation in his honour. The opera contains many fine moments, such as the fierce chorus--a kind of _trepak_--sung by the snow-spirits at the close of the first act; the two contrasting love-duets, one which Ivan Korolevich sings with Kastcheievna, and a later one in which the Tsarevna takes part, in the third act; and the sinister slumber-song which the unhappy Tsarevna is forced to sing for Kastchei, while wishing that his sleep was the sleep of death, is distinguished for its marked originality. As regards harmony, Rimsky-Korsakov in _Kastchei_ indulges in a good deal that is piquant and unusual; there is much chromaticism in the fantastic scenes and a general tendency to what one critic describes as "studied cacophany," which is unusual in the work of this composer. _Kastchei_ stands out as one of the most Wagnerian among Russian operas.