#mlada

So I found out that the Night on Bald Mountain music piece has an actual opera-ballet attached to it, and got a little obsessed with making some character concepts for a hypothetical ani aged movie expansion of the short in Fantasia. I’m adapting my movie idea from the original to make it fit more how a hypothetical old Renaissance Disney movie might work, so it doesn’t match up the plot exactly but here we go.

Our heroine is Princess Mlada, a king and empathetic girl who tries to help the people of her kingdom that suffers from the rule of her uncle, Mstiovy, who is acting as her regent and abusing his powers, but his tyranny pales to the terror the people feel living in the shadow of the Bald Mountain, and the evil tales that surround it, especially as Walpurgis Night approach’s.

Mlada’s love interest is the young Prince Yaromir of a neighboring kingdom, who Mlada has been secretly communicating with thru letters, to try and find aid for her people and freedom from her uncle. Yaromir travels to Mlada’s kingdom in disguise to meet with her finally face to face—however there is a snag in the lover’s plan…

Mlada’s Cousin Princess Voyslava, has been secretly reading Mlada and Yaromir’s correspondence, and having seen the prince in real life when younger, covets him for herself. Determined to have the prince, she concocts a plan with her handmaiden, Mara, (who has also helped her steal the letters), to get Mlada out of the way…

Mara, it is revealed, is actually the witch Morena, who serves the dark god Chernabog. Using her magic she tricks Mlada into accepting a cursed ring, under the illusion that it is being offered by Yaromir. The ring sends Mlada into a state between life and death, leaving Voyslava to take her place and decieve the prince. (I know the actual goddess Morena/Marzanna is more ‘morally grey’ and connected to a life death cycle then evil but she was connected with the villains in the opera)

Trapped in a ghostly form, Mlada will need to discover the secrets of her cousin’s treachery, warn Yaromir, lead him to where her body lies trapped in a deathly sleep in a cave on the Bald Mountsin, and help him maneuver between the ghosts and demons that guard her—all before the midnight of Walpurgis Night, when Chernabog will rise…

Anyway, that’s my idea! The original opera- ballet is called “Mlada” and was created by Stephan Gedeonov in 1870 with music by Alessandro Serov, with the Night on Bald Mountain segement by Modest Mussorgsky to be inserted into it, but unfortunately this version of the project was never realized, though a finished version of the opera with a different composition was staged in 1890 by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov.