Mlada

Mlada (Russian: Млада, the name of a main character) was a project conceived in 1870 by Stepan Gedeonov (1816–1878), director of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres, originally envisioned as a ballet to be composed by Aleksandr Serov with choreography by Marius Petipa.

The project was revised in 1872 as an opera-ballet in four acts, with a libretto by Viktor Krïlov. The composition of the score was divided between César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and Aleksandr Borodin, including interpolated ballet music by Ludwig Minkus. The project was never completed, although much of the score was composed. A printed version, primarily in piano-vocal score, based upon materials available at the time, was published in 2016 by A-R Editions under the editorship of Albrecht Gaub. A performing version of the whole opera was completed by British composer Peter Cowdrey in 2023.

This work is not to be confused with the completed and occasionally performed opera-ballet Mlada (1890) by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, which uses the same libretto by Viktor Krylov, but is otherwise a different composition.