Max Kalbeck was a close friend and partisan of Johannes Brahms. Kalbeck's principal achievement was his eight-volume biography of that composer, published from 1904 to 1914, which has never been translated into English. Kalbeck also edited several volumes of Brahms's correspondence and in 1918, the letters of the poets Gottfried Keller and Paul Heyse, as well as publishing two collections of his own music reviews. Kalbeck wrote new libretti for Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne" and "La finta giardiniera"; and he revised those of "Don Giovanni" and "The Marriage of Figaro" for Gustav Mahler's productions at the Vienna Hofoper. In addition, he supplied
Comic opera 18th century. In the 19th century, Russian comic opera was further developed by Alexey Verstovsky who composed more 30 opera-vaudevilles and 6 grand operas (most of them with spoken dialogue). Later, Modest Mussorgsky worked on two comic operas, "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" and "Zhenitba" ("The Marriage"), which he left unfinished (they were completed only in the 20th century). Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote a comic opera, "Cherevichki" (after Nikolai Gogol, 1885, 1887 Moscow). Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed "May Night" 1878–1879 and "The Golden Cockerel" 1906–1907. In the 20th century, the best examples of comic opera by Russian composers were Igor Stravinsky's "Mavra" (1922)