zartean counterpart Osmin, and the secondary pair of lovers Hasa and Chosru.

At the same time the kings desire to test the delity of his future bride by ap-
pearing to her in the guise of a poor singer also allies it with Rossinis opera.

Lallah Rookh, in love with the singer Feramors, has been betrothed to the un-
known King of Kashmir by her father. She spends the last night before her be-
trothal in the valley before entering Kashmir. In act 2 Lallah Rookh and Feramors
declare their love for one another, but Feramors is caught by the grand vizier Fad-
ladin in the princesss tent and demands that he be put to death. The kings envoy
Chosru has Feramors taken captive and sentences him to death at dawn. Act 3 is
set in the royal harem where Lallah Rookh, deeply distressed by Feramors fate, is
being attired for the marriage ceremony. When she is brought before the king, he
turns out to be none other than Feramors himself. Her friend Hasa is betrothed to
Chosru, and the plans of the vengeful Fadladin are foiled.

In his enthusiasm, Rubinstein had already begun making sketches for the
new opera and asked Rodenberg to set aside his work on the Song of Songs and
concentrate instead on the new libretto. I have a passionate desire to take up
this subject, he declared. Resting at Interlaken, Rubinstein learned from En-
glish newspapers that his brother, Nikolay, was in London. He had been invited
there by the brothers Thomas and Samuel Arthur Chappell, who organized the
Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts at the St. James Hall. The newspapers
reported that Nikolay was ill, and this prompted Anton to write to Kaleriya
Khristoforovna: Let us hope that everything is well with his health and that
the news of his illness is probably only rumors. . . . After all, he commented
wryly, last year they buried me, referring to the canard published in the En-
glish newspapers that he [Anton] had died in the spring of 1860.42 At the same
time he must have taken great comfort from the fact that a few weeks earlier
Karl Klindworth had conducted the English premiere of his Ocean Symphony
at a Musical Art Concert. During his visit to London Nikolay had met Aleksandr
Herzen, editor of the radical Russian Free Press. His association with Herzen
was reported to Vasily Dolgorukov, the head of the notorious Third Section (the
tsarist secret police) in St. Petersburg, and when Nikolay returned home to Rus-
sia in the fall he was searched thoroughly by customs ofcials. According to
Barenboym, this cost him the post of conductor of the Bolshoy Theater when
he was later considered as a replacement for Ivan Shramek. A few years later
Anton himself was introduced to this dangerous acquaintance, but he made
no secret of it and even reported to Edith Raden that he had met the wandering
Bell, a reference to Kolokol [The bell], Herzens radical journal published in
London during the 1850s.
While Rubinstein was resting in Switzerland, the Conservatory was never
far from his thoughts. His own future plans were to be decided by the success
or the failure of the enterprise, and he asked Yakov to try and nd out from
Lavonius, Dmitry Stasov, or Shustov how the affairs of the RMS stood and
whether any decision had been reached about opening a conservatory. Using as
a pretext the fact that he had found a new singer for the grand duchesss suite,

The Founding of the Russian Music Society 95