Prince Igor

opera by Borodin

Also known as: “Knyaz Igor”

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July 13, 2026

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Prince Igor is an opera by Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin, based on the epic poem The Song of Igor's Campaign. The poem recounts the unsuccessful 1185 campaign of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich of Novgorod-Seversky against the Cumans.12

Borodin, a prominent 19th-century Russian composer and scientist, began working on the opera in 1869. While he did not complete it during his lifetime, it was finished posthumously by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov. A famous section of the opera, the "Polovtsian Dances," is frequently performed.3

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opera
Russian opera
Borodin’s incomplete Knyaz Igor (Prince Igor, his own libretto; completed and edited by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov) was staged posthumously in St. Petersburg in 1890. Resembling the style of French grand opera, the work is notable for its use of an idiom based on Russian folk song and…
Read More
Borodin’s incomplete Knyaz Igor (Prince Igor, his own libretto; completed and edited by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov) was staged posthumously in St. Petersburg in 1890. Resembling the style of French grand opera, the work is notable for its use of an idiom based on Russian folk song and…
Read More

Aleksandr Borodin
…work on his operatic masterpiece, Prince Igor (completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov). Act II of Prince Igor contains the often-played “Polovtsian Dances.” He also found time to write two string quartets, a dozen remarkable songs, the unfinished Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, and his tone poem In…
Read More
…work on his operatic masterpiece, Prince Igor (completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov). Act II of Prince Igor contains the often-played “Polovtsian Dances.” He also found time to write two string quartets, a dozen remarkable songs, the unfinished Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, and his tone poem In…
Read More