about this crafty, calculating old peasant, but afterwards, when disappointed greed and his daughter's disgrace have turned his brain, how subtly the music is made to suggest the cunning of mania in that strange scene in which he babbles of his hidden treasures, "stored safe enough where the fish guard them with one eye!" With extraordinary power Dargomijsky reproduces his hideous meaningless laugh as he pushes the Prince into the swirling mill-stream. The character of the Miller alone would suffice to prove that the composer possesses dramatic gifts of the highest order. _The Roussalka_, first performed at the Maryinsky Theatre in May 1856, met with very little success. The Director of the opera, Glinka's old enemy Gedeonov, having made up his mind that so "unpleasing" a work could have no future, mounted it in the shabbiest style. Moreover, as was usually the case with national opera then--and even at a later date--the interpretation was entrusted to second-rate artists. Dargomijsky, in a letter to his pupil Madame Karmalina, comments bitterly upon this; unhappily he could not foresee the time, not so far distant, when the great singer Ossip Petrov would electrify the audience with his wonderful impersonation of the Miller; nor dream that fifty years later Shaliapin would make one of his most legitimate triumphs in this part. The critics met Dargomijsky's innovations without in the least comprehending their drift. Serovit was before the days of his opposition to the national cause--alone appreciated the novelty and originality shown in the opera; he placed it above _A Life for the Tsar_; but even his forcible pen could not rouse the public from their indifference to every new manifestation of art. Dargomijsky himself perfectly understood the reason of its unpopularity. In one of his letters written at this time, he says: "Neither our amateurs nor our critics recognise my talents. Their old-fashioned notions cause them to seek for melody which is merely flattering to the ear. That is not _my_ first thought. I have no intention of indulging them with music as a plaything. _I want the note to be the direct equivalent of the word._ I want truth and realism. This they cannot understand." Ten years after the first performance of _The Roussalka_, the public began to reconsider its verdict. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 changed the views of society towards the humble classes, and directed attention towards all that concerned the past history of the peasantry. A new spirit animated the national ideal. From Poushkin's poetry, with its somewhat "Olympian" attitude to life, the reading public turned to the people's poets, Nekrassov and Nikitin; while the realism of Gogol was now beginning to be understood. To these circumstances we may attribute the reaction in favour of _The Roussalka_, which came as a tardy compensation towards the close of the composer's life.