The miller who was a wizard, a cheat and a matchmaker

The music for the opera is nowadays agreed to be by Mikhail Sokolovsky, although for a century it was mistakenly attributed to Yevstigney Fomin.[2] The opera was first produced at Maddox's Theatre, Moscow, on 31 January [O.S. 20 January] 1779. The opera was one of the most popular in eighteenth century Russia.[3] Sokolovsky's wife premiered the role of Aniuta, and his sister was in the chorus. Sokolovsky was a violinist at the theatre and much of the music was taken from Russian folksongs.[4] The librettist Ablesimov himself chose many of the folk melodies used.[5] The greater reputation of Fomin was probably responsible for the misattribution of the opera to him.[6] It is also believed that the overture to the opera may have been written by the Bohemian composer, working in Russia, Arnošt Vančura (d. 1802).[7]

The opera is one of the few of its kind which survived in performance in Russia into the nineteenth century. A 1915 revival in Moscow included folksongs arranged by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and there was a further revival in Paris in 1929, edited by Nikolai Tcherepnin.[8]

The opera is set in a Russian village.

Act I: The miller Fadei prospers by exploiting his reputation amongst the peasants as a wizard. Filimon, who has consulted him to find his lost horse, decides to ask his help in winning Anyuta, whose parents cannot decide to whom to marry her; the mother seeks a nobleman, the father a farmer.

Act II: Filimon explains to Anyuta that he has enlisted Fadei's support. Fetinia, rating Fadei's skills as a fortune-teller, asks who Anyuta's husband will be. The miller sends her on a stroll and says that it will be a gentleman, the first person she will meet on her path. (Filimon, of course). Meeting Ankudin, Fadei assures him that his daughter's husband will be a working farmer. When Fetinia and Ankudin meet they quarrel over the apparently incompatible promises given to them by the miller.

Act III: At Ankudin's house, amidst Anyuta's friends, Fadei explains that as Filimon is both a landowner and an active farmer, he meets the requirements of both Ankudin and Fetinia. All are satisfied and everything ends happily.[10]

• Ablesimov, Alexander, Мельник – колдун, обманщик и сват (libretto, in Russian) (retrieved 7 January 2012)
• Classiclive.org website (Russian only): The Miller (Summary of the plot), retrieved 7 January 2012
• Findeizen, Nikolai, tr. S. W. Pring, ed. M. Velimirovic and C. R. Jensen, (2008). History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800: Volume II- The Eighteenth Century, Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34826-5
• Gozenpud, A., Опера Михаила Соколовского «Мельник – колдун, обманщик и сват», Klassicheskaya Muzika website (Russian only), retrieved 7 January 2012
• Taruskin, Richard. Fomin, Yevstigney Ipat'yevich in Grove Music Online, retrieved 7 January 2012
• Taruskin, Richard. Sokolovsky, Mikhail Matveyevich in Grove Music Online, retrieved 7 January 2012