This is from the unfinished play (or opera) Maskarad.
Grove Music makes a reference to Arbenin’s monologue from Maskarad (for which Khachaturian had also written incidental music), but it is unclear whether Rachmaninoff ever intended to write a full opera; it may have been that he only intended to do a song or two using the literary material, as seems to have been the case with Monologues from Boris Godunov.
