Salammbô [alternative title: The Libyan ] is an unfinished opera in four acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The fragmentary Russian language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the novel Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert, but includes verses taken from poems by Vasiliy Zhukovsky, Apollon Maykov, Aleksandr Polezhayev, and other Russian poets.
Mussorgsky
Gustave Flaubert
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
The aristocratic Mussorgsky brothers—Filaret (also known as "Yevgeniy", left), and Modest (right), 1858
Monument on the site of the Mussorgky family house in Karevo, Pskov Oblast
Young Mussorgsky as a cadet in the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Imperial Guard, 1856
Alexander Dargomyzhsky