Rachmaninov's Aleko was his first complete opera, written to satisfy graduation requirements at the Moscow Conservatory. As with many of his early works, it was composed in a relatively short period of time, the orchestration having been done in less than a month. The libretto was fashioned from Pushkin's poem "The Gypsies" by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who cut the original text to about a third of its original size. For his score, Rachmaninov was awarded the Great Gold Medal in composition, becoming just the third composer at the conservatory to receive the honor.

The one-act opera divides into 13 sections, including an unusually large proportion of orchestral interludes ("Introduction," "Women's Dance," "Men's Dance," and "Intermezzo"). Although the text comes directly from Pushkin's narrative poem, its extreme truncation sacrifices a lot of the original's dramatic continuity, making the opera seem like a series of vignettes rather than a unified drama. Likewise, Rachmaninov's writing is not yet mature in style, representing a conglomeration of ideas gleaned from other Russian composers, such as Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Glinka. However, the vocal writing is an impressive example of the young composer's emerging lyrical gifts, and he provided the score with enough unifying elements, such as recurring themes and leitmotives, to hold it together.

The story is that of the wandering nobleman, Aleko, who joins a troupe of gypsies and eventually murders his unfaithful young lover, Zemfira. This act of violence draws inevitable parallels to Mascagni's then-contemporary Cavalleria Rusticana, which played at the Bolshoi in 1891 while Rachmaninov was working on Aleko. The actual musical similarities between the two works are minimal, but Rachmaninov's use of an orchestral "Intermezzo" as a prelude to the murder suggests that he did indeed adopt Mascagni's work as a model in form, if not in style.

Recurring musical themes in the opera include a melancholy tune associated with the gypsies, and a restless leitmotiv that always accompanies the statement of Aleko's name. Other notable passages include the old gypsy's relating of his past wife's infidelity (foreshadowing Aleko's own circumstance), which is attractive and quite distinctly Russian in character, and the two dance sequences—the women's exotic and swirling, and the men's more rugged and muscular. The song Zemfira sings to her baby daughter is effective, as is the serenade of her young lover; the harp accompaniment adds to the emotional thrust of his music.

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