The Fair at Sorochyntsi

The Fair at Sorochyntsi
Comic opera by Modest Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky, 1881 portrait by Ilia Repin
Native title
Russian: Сорочинская ярмарка
LibrettistMussorgsky
LanguageRussian
Based onThe Fair at Sorochyntsi
by Gogol
Premiere
13 October 1917 (1917-10-13)
Petrograd's Theatre

The Fair at Sorochyntsi (Russian: Сорочинская ярмарка, Sorochinskaya yarmarka, Sorochyntsi Fair) is a comic opera in three acts by Modest Mussorgsky, composed between 1874 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto, which is based on Nikolai Gogol's short story of the same name, from his early (1832) collection of Ukrainian stories Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The opera remained unfinished and unperformed at Mussorgsky's death in 1881. Today, the completion by Vissarion Shebalin has become the standard.