Verstovsky wrote numerous songs to the words of many famous poets, which he knew personally. He was also a prolific composer of vaudevilles, a genre which he helped to its popularity. More important are his six opera’s, which include his masterpiece Askold’s Grave. This is a romantic opera with spoken dialogue on a subject from Russia’s history. It received its first performance in 1835, a year before Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar. The influence of Weber’s Freischütz (first Russian performance in 1824), although obvious, is often exaggerated. Askold’s Grave had about 600 performances in Tsarist Russia, not counting the provincial theatres. It even reached New York in 1869, as the first Russian opera performed in the United States. The part of the Unknown was one of Fyodor Shalyapin’s big successes. Indeed, he made his debut as an 18-year old (1891) in this role.
Askold’s Grave has been recorded recently (CSN 810015).

Sources:

My main sources, besides the usual handbooks, were
Keldysh, Yu. V., Istoriya Russkoy Muzyki, 1948. Tom 1, p. 345-368.

O.E. Levasheva in , Istoriya Russkoy Muzyki ed. by N.V. Tumanina, 1957. Tom 1, p. 216-234.

G. Abraham, The Operas of Alexei Verstovsky, 19-th Century Music, 7(1983) no. 3, 326-335.

M. Shcherbakova, Introduction to piano score of Askold’s Grave, 1983.

Bibliography:

Dobrokhotov, B., A.N. Verstovsky, Zhizn’, Teatral’naya Deyatelnost’, Opernoye Tvorchestvo, Moscow/Leningrad, 1949 (not available to me).