Mlada (, 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 . 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, and although much of the score was composed, no performing edition is currently in use. 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. Composition history Mlada was conceived in 1870 by Stepan Gedeonov, director of the Imperial Theatres (1867–1875), as a ballet to be choreographed by Marius Petipa with music by Alexander Serov. The plot of Mlada was adapted, with a new time and place, from a ballet by Filippo Taglioni entitled The Shadow (, , Tyeñ ), which premiered in 1839 in Saint Petersburg. Serov died, however, in 1871 before composing anything for the work. Gedeonov revised his conception as an opera-ballet, with a libretto by Viktor Krïlov, and in 1872 proposed through Vladimir Stasov a collaborative effort by four members of The Mighty Handful—César Cui, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, and Aleksandr Borodin—who were to write music for the sung portions of the libretto and dramatic action. Ludwig Minkus, at that time the Bolshoy Kamenniy Theatre's First Imperial Ballet Composer, was to write ballet music to be inserted at various points. Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following details concerning the work's genesis in his memoirs, Chronicle of My Musical Life, 1909: "Gedeonov, Director of the Imperial Theatres at the time, had conceived the idea of producing a work which should combine ballet, opera and spectacle. For this purpose he had written the program of a stage performance in four acts on a subject borrowed from the Elbe slavs and had commissioned V. A. Krïlov to work up the text. Mlada, with its mixture of fantasy and everyday reality, was a most grateful subject for musical treatment. Gedeonov asked Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and myself to compose music for it; moreover, Minkus, the official ballet composer of the Imperial Theatres, was