I Still Love Him (Dargomyzhsky)

Tchaikovsky Research

During her benefit performance of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville in Moscow on 30 April/12 May 1868, Désirée Artôt sang two Russian songs which Tchaikovsky had apparently orchestrated specially for her, apparently at the request of the Italian Opera impresario Eugenio Merelli [1]. One of these songs was Skylark (Жаворонок) by Mikhail Glinka (ČW 438) [2], while the other was I Still Love Him (Я всё ещё его, безумная, люблю) by Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky [3]. Both were performed in Rosina's teaching scene in Act II of the opera.

No references survive to Tchaikovsky's work on these arrangements, which have been lost.

Dargomyzhsky's romance I Still Love Him was composed in 1851 to the poem The Mad Woman (Безумная) by Yuliya Zhadovskaya (1824-1883).

Notes and References

  1. See ČW, p. 766.
  2. See Antrakt (Анткракт), 5 May 1868 [O.S.].
  3. The title of Dargomyzhsky's romance was established by Aleksandr Komarov in 2014. See Даргомыжский и Чайковский. Биографические и творческие пересечения (2014) and Neue Publikationen. Systematisches Verzeichnis der Werke Pёtr Il'ič Čajkovskijs (2018), p. 5.