This 1842 play is a satire of courtship and cowardice, which centres on a young woman, Agafya, who is wooed by four bachelors, each with his own idiosyncrasies.

In 1868, Mussorgsky rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Zhenitba, with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue.

According to one critic, it was an experiment in Russian opera that used "satirical, grotesque musical language, with all its jolting contrasts and exaggerations, when the composer, in the best Russian-Petersburg tradition, mocks his characters but at the same time 'weeps' over them.

The cast included Modest Mussorgsky (Podkolyosin), Alexander Dargomyzhsky (Kochkaryov), Aleksandra Purgold (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Konstantin Velyaminov (Stepan).

The cast included Sigizmund Blumenfeld (Podkolyosin), A. P. Sandulenko (Kochkaryov), Sonya Rimskaya-Korsakova (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Gury Stravinsky (Stepan).

The cast included Vladimir Lossky (Podkolyosin), Fyodor Ernst (Kochkaryov), Serafima Selyuk-Roznatovskaya (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Khristofor Tolkachev (Stepan).

In April 1973, at Cornell University's Barnes Hall, a Readers' Theater performance in Leonard Lehrman's English translation was presented in class with George Gibian as Podkolyossin, William Austin as Kotchkaryov, Laurel Fay as Fyokla Ivanovna and Jerry Amaldev as Stepan, with Leonard Lehrman at the piano.

Let's start from the beginning and discuss the dowry ..." He also worries that she is not sufficiently highly bred for him: "I don't suppose she is the daughter of an Officer?...