Alexander Ostrovsky

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-85) Russian dramatist, was born in Moscow into a merchant family. He wrote about forty prose plays and eight in blank verse. His main subject matter is the life of Muscovite and provincial merchants and lower officials. Among his best plays are It’s a Family Affair – We’ll Settle it Ourselves (1850), The Poor Bride (1852), The Dowerless Girl (1879), The Storm (1860, translated into English in 1898), and The Forest (1871). Ostrovsky remains to this day extremely popular in Russia, and his plays are always in repertoire of Russian theatres; there are a lot of movies based on his plays.
See:Vasily Perov. Portrait of the Playwright Alexander Ostrovsky.

The Snow Maiden is a Russian folk-tale about a girl, daughter of Frost (the father) and Spring (the mother), made of snow. The tale was the subject of a play by the Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. Snow Maiden lived safely among people as an adopted daughter of an old and childless couple. She was beautiful and every man fell in love with her but not for long, because she could not love back. All the suitors, and among them the shepherd and pipe-player, Lelle, one by one, left her for her less beautiful but lively friends. The Snow Maiden envied them and asked her mother, Spring, to give her the  ability to love. Love was fatal for her. She fell in love with Mizgir and was melted by the Sun.
The play by Alexander Ostrovsky became the basis for the opera by N. Rimsky-Korsakov. Many Russian artists painted the stage sets, and curtains, designed costumes for the play and opera. Among them Vasnetsov, Vrubel.
See also: Victor Vasnetsov. The Snow Maiden.
Mikhail Vrubel. Snow Maiden, Lelle, Mizgir.