"native opera to win a permanent place in the repertoire. It was one of the first Russian operas to be known outside Russia. The opera was given its premiere performance on 27 November 1836 in Saint Petersburg conducted by Catterino Cavos with set designs by Andrei Roller. It was followed several years later with its premiere in Moscow on 7 September (Old Style) 1842 in a new production with sets by Serkov and Shenyan. Glinka's play was featured heavily throughout the Romanov tercentenary celebrations. It was performed in a gala performance at Marinsky Theatre, Performances of ""A Life for the"
"taking as a model for the meter the Alsatian ""Kochersberger Tanz"". Nationalistic influence is clearer in the operas of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka: the ""Nuptial chorus and scene"" from act 3 of the opera ""A Life for the Tsar"" (1834–36) was the first time a composer of art music set the pentasyllabic hemistichs of Russian wedding songs in quintuple meter instead of adapting it to a more conventional one. In his next opera, ""Ruslan and Ludmila"" (1837–42) Glinka repeated the effect in the opening of act 1, where the chorus sings an epithalamium to Lel', the Slavonic god of"
"opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas ""A Life for the Tsar"" (1836) and ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"" (1842). After him, in the 19th century in Russia, there were written such operatic masterpieces as ""Rusalka"" and ""The Stone Guest"" by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, ""Boris Godunov"" and ""Khovanshchina"" by Modest Mussorgsky, ""Prince Igor"" by Alexander Borodin, ""Eugene Onegin"" and ""The Queen of Spades"" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and ""The Snow Maiden"" and ""Sadko"" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the growth of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general Slavophilism movement. In the 20th century, the"
"Mariya Stepanova Mariya Matveyevna Stepanova (Russian: Мария Матвеевна Степанова) (1811 or 1816 – 1903) was a Russian opera singer who created the leading soprano roles in ""A Life for the Tsar"", ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"", and ""Dmitry Donskoy"". Stepanova was born into a family of musicians active in the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg. She initially studied to be ballet dancer and was then trained in singing by Catterino Cavos. She made her operatic debut in 1835 and the following year created the role of Antonida in Glinka's ""A Life for the Tsar"". She sang with the Imperial Opera at the"
"Ruslan and Lyudmila (opera) Ruslan and Lyudmila ( is an opera in five acts (eight tableaux) composed by Mikhail Glinka between 1837 and 1842. The opera is based on the 1820 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The Russian libretto was written by Valerian Shirkov, Nestor Kukolnik and N. A. Markevich, among others. Pushkin's death in the famous duel prevented him from writing the libretto himself as planned. Today, the best-known music from the opera is its overture. The premiere took place in Saint Petersburg on 27 November 1842 at the Bolshoi Kamenniy Teatr. The initial lack of"
"Nestor Kukolnik Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik () (1809–1868) was a Russian playwright and prose writer of Carpatho-Rusyn origin. Immensely popular during the early part of his career, his works were subsequently dismissed as sententious and sentimental. Today, he is best remembered for having contributed to the libretto of the first Russian opera, ""A Life for the Tsar"" by Mikhail Glinka. Glinka also set many of his lyrics to music. Nestor Kukolnik was born on September 8, 1809 in the city of Saint Petersburg in the family of a professor lecturing at the Saint Petersburg Teacher's College. His father, Bazyli Wojciech Kukolnik"
"gather new voices for the choir; the 19 new boys he found earned him another 1,500 rubles from the Tsar. He soon embarked on his second opera: ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"". The plot, based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin, was concocted in 15 minutes by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time. Consequently, the opera is a dramatic muddle, yet the quality of Glinka's music is higher than in ""A Life for the Tsar"". He uses a descending whole tone scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor who has abducted Lyudmila,"
"Until 1886, the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre was principal theatre for both the Imperial Ballet and the Imperial Russian Opera. It was there that the first Russian operas — Glinka's ""A Life for the Tsar"" and ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"" — were premiered. Although the theatre would include many of the great Russian operas in its repertory, many of the works of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their world premieres on the stage of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. Many of the great 19th century ballets of Marius Petipa and Arthur Saint-Léon were given for the first time on the stage of the"
"Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I change the name of the opera to ""A Life for the Tsar"" and assigns a librettist - Baron Rosen. Acquaintance with the future co-author shocked Glinka: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere was successful, but Glinka was still not entirely happy with the libretto: ""False words were written by Rosen"". When Nicholas I learned that ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"" was written on Pushkin's subject, he sees it as sedition. The bitter experience of the composer brighten his supporters. 1953 Locarno International Film Festival The Composer Glinka Kompozitor Glinka (; English literal translation,"
"was promoted to a chief conductor and then became musical director of Helikon Opera which he co-founded along with Dmitry Bertman and became his friend and helper till his death on December 29, 1998. During his life he has toured throughout Russia and overseas conducting such operas as Mikhail Glinka's ""A Life for the Tsar"", Alexander Borodin's ""Prince Igor"", Modest Mussorgsky's ""Boris Godunov"" and ""Khovanshchina"", and both ""The Queen of Spades"" and ""Eugene Onegin"" of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, among others. Besides operas he also conducted ballet music as well, including Sergei Prokofiev's ""Cinderella"", ""Peer Gynt"" and Rodion Shchedrin's ""The Humpbacked"
"Alexei Lvov Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov (Russian: ""Алексей Фёдорович Львов"") (June 5, 1799 in Reval–December 28, 1870 in Romainiai (now Kaunas)) was a Russian composer. He composed the imperial Russian national anthem ""Bozhe, tsarya khrani"" (also known as ""God Save the Tsar""). He wrote the opera ""Undine"" in 1846. He was entombed in the Pažaislis Monastery, Kaunas (Lithuania). Lvov was born into a family which was keenly interested in music. He was the son of Feodor Petrovich Lvov, who was Maestro of the Imperial Chapel in St Petersburg from 1826 to 1836 (having succeeded Bortnianskij). Lvov codified the traditional Russian liturgical"
"of both the Russian Musical Society and the St. Petersburg Conservatory, was impressed by Lavrovskaya's performance in a student presentation of Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera ""Orfeo ed Euridice"". She sent Lavroskaya to Paris in 1867 to study with French mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. Upon her return in 1868, Lavroskaya was engaged by the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera, making her professional debut as Vanya in Mikhail Glinka's opera ""A Life for the Tsar"". Lavrovskaya later sang Ratmir in ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"", along with many other mezzo-soprano roles, including Carmen and Mignon. She stayed with the company four years, after which she went"
"Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in Saint Petersburg until 1846 and then at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow until 1855 when she retired from the stage. During that time, she periodically returned to perform in Saint Petersburg where she created the role of Ksenia in Anton Rubinstein's ""Dmitry Donskoy"" in 1852. Stepanova died in Saint Petersburg in 1903 and is buried in the city's Novodevichy Cemetery. Mariya Stepanova Mariya Matveyevna Stepanova (Russian: Мария Матвеевна Степанова) (1811 or 1816 – 1903) was a Russian opera singer who created the leading soprano roles in ""A Life for the Tsar"", ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"", and"
"choral style, which was subsequently used Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin and reached its zenith in the works of Mussorgsky. In this snippet, introduced principles of folk supporting voices, bass, which before were considered ornament for choir, led the main melody. This is a unique case for the beginning of the 19th century"". The work in question, based on the tale of Ivan Susanin, was Glinka's epoch-making ""A Life for the Tsar"". (another name for this Glinka's opera is ""Ivan Susanin"", too). Mikhail Glinka took his creation ""A Life for the Tsar"" in the Petersburg Imperial theatre, in which the Department"
"hero, but when Nicholas I attended a rehearsal, Glinka changed the title to ""A Life for the Tsar"" as an ingratiating gesture. This title was retained in the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution, when it reverted to ""Ivan Susanin"". The opera's openly monarchist libretto was edited to comply with Soviet ideology. The Tsar's anthem melody on Tchaikovsky's 1812 ""finale"" was in turn replaced by the chorus ""Glory, glory to you, holy Rus'!"", ""Славься, славься, святая Русь!"" from Glinka's Opera. In 1838, Nicholas I ordered a monument built to Susanin in Kostroma, but this was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, who"
"that country. Ironically, the success of Rossini's ""Semiramide"" earlier the same season was what allowed ""A Life"" to be staged at all, with virtually all the cast from ""Semiramide"" retained for ""A Life"". Despite ""A Life's"" success, the furor over ""Semiramide"" aroused an overwhelming demand for Italian opera. This proved a setback for Russian opera in general and particularly for Glinka's next opera, ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"" when it was produced in 1842. Its failure prompted Glinka to leave Russia; he died in exile. Despite Glinka's international attention, which included the admiration of Liszt and Berlioz for his music and his"
"European training, much of ""A Life for the Tsar"" was structured according to conventional Italian and French models of the period. Nevertheless, several passages in the opera are based on Russian folk songs or folk melodic idioms that become a full part of the musical texture. Most importantly, this opera laid the foundation for the series of Russian nationalistic historical operas continued by works such as Serov's ""Rogneda"", Mussorgsky's ""Boris Godunov"", Rimsky-Korsakov's ""Maid of Pskov"", Tchaikovsky's ""The Oprichnik"" or ""Mazeppa"", and Borodin's ""Prince Igor"". As popular as the opera was, its monarchist libretto was an embarrassment to the Soviet state."
"der Fremd"" from the Yiddish by Leyb Naydus; an ode by Euripides from the ancient Greek; Modest Mussorgsky's ""Zhenitba"" (""Getting Married"") (1973), Mikhail Glinka's ""A Life for the Tsar"" (1979), and Rusalka (Dargomyzhsky) (1986) from the Russian - in collaboration with his mother, Emily R. Lehrman (1923-2015), along with poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and [Andrei Voznesensky]] (1967); Vladimir Mayakovsky (1970); Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Afanasy Fet, Ivan Krylov, Gavrila Derzhavin (all 1977); Velemir Khlebnikov and Alexander Pushkin (1986); Yefim Medvedovsky (2013-2016); and Galina Leybovich (2015). In 2016 he translated Sergei Slonimsky's opera ""King Lear"", based on the Boris Pasternak Russian"
"writers and poets of the Silver Age, prophecy and afflatus about the approaching Doomsday. The opera was staged in a chamber hall of Alexey Rybnikov’s theatre in 1992. The year 2013 is marked by the work on the stage version of the ""Live Pictures of the time of Alexander I and Napoleon Bonapart"" getting the new shorter name - modern opera ""War and Peace"". Alexey Rybnikov Alexey Lvovich Rybnikov (; born July 17, 1945 in Moscow) is a modern Russian composer. He is the author of music for Soviet and Russian musicals (rock-operas) ""Star and Death of Joaquin Murrieta"" (,"
"of opera was headed by Cavos. Cavos immediately adopted a new opera. Moreover, Cavos himself conducted the orchestra at the premiere of the opera ""A Life for the Tsar"" December 9 (November 27) 1836. Both opera with one plot – of Cavos and of Glinka – were included in the repertoire of the Bolshoi Kamenny theater in St. Petersburg for many years simultaneously. Singer Osip Petrov (a pupil of Catterino Cavos) sang the role of Ivan Susanin in both operas (the first singer of Ivan Susanin in the Cavos opera was a pupil of Catterino Cavos Piotr Zlov). Cavos acquainted"
"someone should write a Croatian national opera based on the first Slavic national opera A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka. Young Lisinski, author of music for reveille ""Prosto zrakom ptica leti (Bird flies freely through the air)"", seemed as a good choice. Libretto for opera was written by Josip Car who based it on the idea of Alberto Ognjen Štriga. Libretto was then reworked by Dimitrija Demeter (who is considered to be its author), while the instrumentation was refined by JK Wisner Morgenstern, Lisinski's music teacher. Events surrounding the July victims in the summer of 1845 delayed rehearsals"
"and Lyudmila"" is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music. Tchaikovsky's operas ""Eugene Onegin"" (1879) and ""The Queen of Spades"" (La Dame de Pique, 1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name. Mussorgsky's monumental ""Boris Godunov"" (two versions, 1868–9 and 1871–2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include Dargomyzhsky's ""Rusalka"" and ""The Stone Guest""; Rimsky-Korsakov's ""Mozart and Salieri"", ""Tale of Tsar Saltan"", and ""The Golden Cockerel""; Cui's ""Prisoner of the Caucasus"", ""Feast"
"War and Peace (opera) War and Peace (Op. 91) (, ""Voyna i mir"") is an opera in two parts (an Epigraph and 13 scenes), sometimes arranged as five acts, by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson, based on the novel ""War and Peace"" by Leo Tolstoy. Although Tolstoy's work is classified as a novel, the 1812 invasion of Russia by the French was based on real-life events, and some real-life people appear as characters in both the novel and the opera, e.g. Prince Mikhail Kutuzov and Napoleon Bonaparte. Mendelson and Prokofiev's original scheme for"
"(from 1830) and chairing the board of directors (from 1848 until 1860). He turned to the genre of opera in 1828 and wrote six works. The romantic opera ""Askold's Grave"", written on a subject from Russian history, was the most successful of the six. It has been claimed that the music for ""Askold's Grave"" was polished up by Gioachino Rossini, based on Verstovsky's ideas, for a fee that covered a gambling debt. First performed in 1835 (a year before Mikhail Glinka's ""A Life for the Tsar"") ""Askold's Grave"" received about 200 performances in St Petersburg and 400 in Moscow in"
"Irina Zhurina Irina Zhurina (; born 28 August 1946) is a Russian operatic coloratura soprano. Zhurina was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine). After studying singing at the Kharkiv Art Institute, she joined the Kharkiv Opera in 1971, where she sang the leading roles in La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, etc. Since 1975, she had been a soloist of the opera at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. On this stage, she performed the leading opera parts composed for high soprano (lyrical coloratura soprano), such as Antonida (A Life for the Tsar), The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), The Swan-Princess (The Tale of Tsar"
"Ruslan and Ludmila Ruslan and Ludmila (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is a poem by Alexander Pushkin, published in 1820. It is written as an epic fairy tale consisting of a dedication (посвящение), six ""cantos"" (), and an epilogue (). It tells the story of the abduction of Ludmila, the daughter of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, by an evil wizard and the attempt by the brave knight Ruslan to find and rescue her. Pushkin began writing the poem in 1817, while attending the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo. He based it on Russian folktales he had heard as a child."
"Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, a position he held for 22 years. In 1852 and 1853 he sang roles in Anton Rubinstein's first two operas, ""Dmitry Donskoy"" and ""Fomka the Fool"". Hulak-Artemovsky performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1864 to 1865. He performed over fifty operatic roles during his career, including Ruslan in Glinka's ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"", Masetto in Mozart's ""Don Giovanni"", as well as Antonio and Lord Ashton in Donizetti's ""Linda di Chamounix"" and ""Lucia di Lammermoor"". A composer of operas, as well as vocal and instrumental music, Hulak-Artemovsky composed his seminal work ""Zaporozhets za Dunayem"" in 1864,"
"him to the problems of Russian society. He was twenty-two years old when he wrote his first composition based on a Russian theme: a melodrama, ""Death"", set to Lermontov's poem. In his later works, he often used literary models with sharply contoured plots. In 1910 Zhukovsky's ""Tale of Tsar Berendei"" inspired him to write the ""Fairy Tale for Cello and Piano"". He composed the rhapsody ""Taras Bulba"" (1918) to Gogol's short story, and five years later, in 1923, completed his first string quartet, inspired by Tolstoy's ""Kreutzer Sonata"". Two of his later operas were based on Russian themes: ""Káťa Kabanová"","
"was established off the southern side of the palace. The palace was used as a residence for visiting members of the imperial family until 1917. The Mariinsky Theatre in St Peterburg is also named in honor of Empress Maria Alexandrovna. It was built in 1859-1860 according to the plans of architect Albert Cavos as an opera and ballet house. The theatre opened on 2 October 1860, with a performance of Mikhail Glinka's opera ""A Life for the Tsar"". The new theatre was named Mariinsky after its imperial patroness, Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Form the early 1860s through the 1870s, Maria Alexandrovna"
"operas, including: ""Astrea placata"" (1770 Saint Petersburg), ""Antigone"" (1772 Saint Petersburg), and ""Le quattro stagioni e i dodici mesi dell'anno"" (1776 St Petersburg). Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816), a famous Neapolitan composer of more than 100 operas seria and buffa, he spent in Russia eight years (1776–1783), where he wrote 12 operas including ""Nitteti"" (1777 Saint Petersburg), ""Lucinda e Armidoro"" (1777 Saint Petersburg), ""Il barbiere di Siviglia, ovvero La precauzione inutile"" (1782 Hermitage Theatre), and ""Il mondo della luna"" (1782 Kamenny Island Theatre). Giuseppe Sarti (1729–1802), a composer of about 40 operas, he spent in Russia eighteen years (1784–1802). After being for"
"operas ""Ivan Susanin"" and ""Ruslan and Lyudmila"". They were neither the first operas in the Russian language nor the first by a Russian, but they gained fame for relying on distinctively Russian tunes and themes and being in the vernacular. Russian folk music became the primary source for the younger generation composers. A group that called itself ""The Mighty Five"", headed by Mily Balakirev (1837–1910) and including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81), Alexander Borodin (1833–87) and César Cui (1835–1918), proclaimed its purpose to compose and popularize Russian national traditions in classical music. Among the Mighty Five's most notable compositions"
"traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works ""The Miserly Knight"" and ""Francesca da Rimini"", Igor Stravinsky in ""Le Rossignol"", ""Mavra"", ""Oedipus rex"", and ""The Rake's Progress"", Sergei Prokofiev in ""The Gambler"", ""The Love for Three Oranges"", ""The Fiery Angel"", ""Betrothal in a Monastery"", and ""War and Peace""; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in ""The Nose"" and ""Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"", Edison Denisov in ""L'écume des jours"", and Alfred Schnittke in ""Life with an Idiot"" and ""Historia von D. Johann Fausten"". Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known"
"opera) re-used music that Prokofiev had written for Eisenstein's film ""Ivan the Terrible"". War and Peace (opera) War and Peace (Op. 91) (, ""Voyna i mir"") is an opera in two parts (an Epigraph and 13 scenes), sometimes arranged as five acts, by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson, based on the novel ""War and Peace"" by Leo Tolstoy. Although Tolstoy's work is classified as a novel, the 1812 invasion of Russia by the French was based on real-life events, and some real-life people appear as characters in both the novel and the opera,"