Gennady Ivanovich Banshchikov is one of the greatest composers of our time. The article presents some results of the study of the musical-theatrical legacy of G.I. Banshchikov. The author focuses his attention on the composer’s opera created on the plot of the famous comedy by A.S. Griboyedov. The mastery of the author-playwright, unfolding the artistic and semantic contexts of a literary source by musical means, is demonstrated through analyzing the image of the work’s main character – Chatsky.