Another theatrical production, to which Roerich devoted much time, is the opera The Snow Maiden by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. She captivated him in his youth. The first production in Roerich’s sets was in the Paris Opera Opera in 1908, the second in 1912 in St. Petersburg and the third in 1922 in Chicago.
Roerich found his original solution. His sketches are full of great philosophical meaning. They are imbued with the thought of the unity of the life of nature and man. In all the sketches, and especially in Sloboda Berendey and Yarilina Valley, Nikolai Konstantinovich depicts distant pagan antiquity, the mythical time when Yarile was worshiped by the Sun, rain and wind, hills and stones. In the landscape of Roerich, hills and stones, all nature seem to be animated.
In the sketch “The Sloboda of Berendey” even squat huts stand out from behind flowering trees like fantastic living creatures. Spring flowering of nature and the feeling of infinity and the greatness of the world is expressed by the artist with a deep pantheistic feeling.
Roerich for the first time created costumes for the characters of this fairy tale. Frost is a kind, gray-bearded old man of Russian fairy tales. Snow Maiden – a fragile girl in a patterned fur coat. All images conquer their fabulous, poetic.
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