Sadko is a nom de radio taken from the main character of the Opera-bilina (operatically treated heroic ballad) in three or five acts by Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov to his own libretto, compiled from the bilina "Sadko, bogatly gost" (Sadko, the Rich Trader) and other ancient ballads and tales with the assi stance of Vladimir Vasil'yevich Stasov, Vasily Yastrebtsev, Nikolay Shtrup, Nikolay Findeyzen and Vladimir Nikolayevich Bel'sky.
Sadko was a historical figure, a wealthy member of seafaring commercial guild of old republican Novgorod, who in 1167 dedicated a church to St Boris and St Gleb, the first martyrs of the Orthodox Church. He was reincarnated as a legendary figure in the great Novgorod cycle of bard narratives (bilini) recovered and recorded by folklorists in the far north of Russia i n the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In most versions, Sadko starts out as a humble guslya one who entertains the nobility by singing bilini to them with the accompaniment of his psaltery. He conceives an ambition to compete with the hereditary merchants traders of Novgorod, for which he is reviled and exiled. He achieves his ambition by captivating the Sea King with his play ing, for which he is rewarded with golden fish and with the hand of the Sea King's daughter. One way of reading this Slavonic Orpheus tale is as a parable of free enterprise, capitalism avant le mot. Such an interpretation resonates wryly with the stage history of Rimsky's opera, his first to be given its premiere by Savva Mamontov, the Moscow railway tycoon.
The bilina also embodies an interestiug metaphor for the collision of Christianity and the older pantheistic religion of the Sl avs, when St Nicholas of Maysk (converted into a nameless pilgrim elder in the opera for reasons of censorship) intervenes to end the sojourn in the Sea Kingdom and sends him back to Novgorod with his bride, who through her metamorphosis miraculously provides the city with an outlet to the sea.
The best-known music in Sadko is in the fourth scene when the foreign traders address the Novgorod council at the nouveau-riche Sadko's request. The Viking (Varangian) Trader's song became a r ecital favorite second to none in the USSR, while the Indian Trader's song known as 'Chanson Indoue' or 'A Song of India'- has long been a staple of 'semi-classical' background the world over.
