Rimsky-Korsakov Apartment and Museum

Before she moved out, Nadezhda sorted and catalogued her husband's manuscripts, music library, posters, programmes, photographs, treasured gifts, tributes, and family heirlooms.

The dream of setting up a museum only became a realistic idea in 1967 when a decision was taken by the state to found an apartment-museum, following the untiring efforts of three generations of Rimsky-Korsakovs for over fifty years.

Inside there remained original tiled corner stoves, an elegant marble fireplace, tall folding doors, and window fanlights with bronze handles and bolts.

During this time he composed eleven of his fifteen operas, including Christmas Eve, Sadko, Mozart and Salieri, The Tsar's Bride, Kaschey the Deathless, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, The Golden Cockerel, and over 40 romances.

At another desk would sit Nadezhda, faithful assistant in all her husband's musical undertakings, making corrections and piano arrangements of his symphonic and operatic works.

Composers such as Glazunov, Lyadov, Stravinsky, Taneyev, Scriabin, and Rachmaninov gave premières of their own works, and the singers Fyodor Shalyapin, Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel and Yevgeniya Mravina performed, accompanied by Rimsky-Korsakov's wife.

The composer belonged to an ancient noble family descended from Ventseslav Korsak, who came to Russia from Lithuania and whose progeny later russified their surname to ‘Korsakov’.