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- Russian composers were the first ones in Europe to make an aesthetic out of nationalism and Russia served as the
only real exponent of Slav musical culture. Rimsky-Korsakov solidified the authentic 'Russian' idiom of the future, which
explored Russian legend, fantasy, and Orientalism.
- He was by far the most prolific of the "Five", with a long list of orchestral works, 15 operas, and a great amount
of chamber and vocal music. Moreover, his major works were divisible with no great musical loss into small sections which
could be put to utility concert and "background" use. He also finished, rewrote, and orchestrated many works of other
Russian composers, including Alexander Dargomyzhsky's Stone Guest, Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov,
and (with Glazunov) Borodin's Prince Igor.
- Rimsky-Korsakov was the teacher of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, among others. The teacher's imaginative scoring and
instrumentation are evident throughout their works.
- The Golden Cockerel, the composer's final work, was not only his last opera, but also his only opera that
would achieve repertory status beyond Russia. His other operas, The Snow Maiden (1882), Sadko (1898), and
Tsar Saltan (1900), are popular in Russia. Two of his most famous works are extracts from his operas: 'Song
of India' from Sadko and 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' from Tsar Saltan.
- Obvious influences on Stravinsky and the 'anti-opera' genre: at the Paris premiere of The Golden Cockerel (Le Coq
d'Or), the singers sat along the edge of the stage. The dancers and mimes enacted the plot on stage according to
the conventions of 'ballet d'action.' Musicologist Marina Frolova-Walker sees these dehumanizing stage conventions in
The Golden Cockerel as a crucial step in the modernist dismantling of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk.' Stravinsky's
operas The Nightengale and later stage works like Pulcinella, Renard, and The Wedding emphasized
this 'anti-opera' theme by using a similar split in the staging of works.
- His mixture of Russian history and legend, realism and the supernatural alludeded to Wagner. Some have compared
Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel with Wagner's Parsifal. The parody of legend is
later seen in Stravinsky's Petrushka.
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