Duen'ia (obruchenie v monastyre). Liriko-komicheskaia opera v 4-kh deistviiakh, 9-ti kartinakh [The Duenna: betrothal in a monastery. A lyrico-comical opera in four acts and nine scenes]. Op. 86. Piano score by Prokofiev (Prokof'ev), Sergei and Maria Mendel'son-Prokofieva (verse texts) - 1960

1960. Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1960. Quarto (29.2 × 21.8 cm). Original embossed cloth boards; 409, [4] pp. Very good. Second edition (first published in 1944). Considered one of the happiest and brightest compositions of Sergei Prokofiev, this comic opera, based on the work of the Irish playwright Richard Sheridan, was completed in 1940, just prior to WWII. The war interfered with the first planned production at the Bolshoi Theater, and the opera opened only in 1946 at the Kirov Theater (Mariinsky Theater) in Leningrad. Prokofiev wrote the score of the opera but collaborated with the young librettist Mira Mendelson (1915-1968), on the verse sections. Mendelson, who would later become his second wife, also wrote the libretto for his subsequent opera "War and Peace."

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) is considered one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. An early talent and a reputed rebel of classical music, in his creative life he composed eight ballets, seven operas, seven symphonies, nine piano sonatas and much more. In 1918, following the two Russian revolutions, Prokofiev left Russia for the United States, subsequently living in France and Germany before re-settling in the Soviet Union in 1936. Finding himself in Soviet Russia in the darkest of times, Prokofiev continued to lead a productive creative life, even as he was "encouraged" to write patriotic pieces such as his 1939 "Zdravitsa" (Cheers) to celebrate Joseph Stalin's sixtieth birthday. Prokofiev also had the misfortune of dying on the same day as the great leader, on March 3, 1953, with his death going virtually unnoticed by the Soviet press and the public. For more information see Shlifstein S. and Rose Prokofieva (trans.), Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (2000). One of 550 copies printed. KVK, OCLC show copies of this edition at Notre Dame, Indiana, Dallas, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Goldsmiths (London), Oxford, UDK (Berlin), Austrian National Library, Marburg and Rome.