Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857) in 1840

On December 9, 1836 (or November 27, 1836 in the old style, Russian Julian calendar), Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar received its premiere at the Imperial Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than just an opera and a premiere, the opening night of A Life for the Tsar – 183 years ago today – marks the moment that a tradition of cultivated Russian music came into existence!

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) was the right musician at the right place at the right time. Born in the village of Novospasskoye, in the Smolensk Oblast (or “province”), he came from a wealthy, highly cultured, land-owning family. As a child he studied piano and violin and received a first-rate education, first at the hands of his governess Varvara Fedorovna Klammer, and then in St. Petersburg at the Blagorodny School, an exclusive private school for the children of nobility. When he graduated, he did what young men of his class did, and that was take a cushy civil service job. In Glinka’s case, he became assistant secretary of the Department of Public Highways. 

It was a do-next-to-nothing, light-weight post, one that allowed Glinka lots of time to indulge his musical interests: playing piano and composing drawing-room music for the amusement of his high-society friends in St. Petersburg’s toniest salons.

And then something in Glinka clicked (might we say “Glinked”?). Tired of his dilettante existence, Glinka – already in his mid-twenties – decided that he wanted to be a real composer. His family was against it, but in 1830, at the age of 26, Glinka left home. Three years in Italy (including a stay at the Milan Conservatory) were followed by a year of intense study in Berlin. 

Glinka learned his lessons well. When he returned to St. Petersburg in 1834, he was determined to compose an opera that would be recognizably, authentically Russian.  

Glinka got involved in a high-end salon run by the Imperial Court poet Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (1783-1852). It was through Zhukovsky that Glinka got to meet and be inspired by a group of artists who were in the process of defining Russian literature and art and putting it on the international map. Dropping names faster that gulls drop guano, Glinka recalled:

“I continued to visit Zhukovsky in the evenings. He was living at the Winter Palace, and each week a select group gathered there. To mention a few: [Alexander] Pushkin, Prince Petr Vyazemsky, [Nikolai] Gogol, and [the poet and critic Petr] Pletnev. [Various] others turned up as well. Sometimes, instead of [a] reading, there would be singing and piano playing. When I mentioned my desire to undertake a Russian opera, Zhukovsky wholeheartedly approved my intention and suggested a subject: Ivan Susanin.” 

Monument to Ivan Susanin in Kostroma, Russia

Background. 

The period between 1598 and 1613 is known in Russian history as the “Time of Troubles.” And that it was: a catastrophic time of dynastic struggles and pretenders to the throne of the Tsars; famine; and invasion and occupation by the hated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

On February 21, 1613, a sixteen-year-old nobleman (nobleboy?) named Mikhail Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia by a Grand National Assembly. Having elected Mikhail Romanov Tsar, there was a priceless moment when it was realized that no one knew where he was. He was finally tracked down at the Ipatiev Monastery near the city of Kostroma, about 150 miles northeast of Moscow. When he was informed that he’d been elected Tsar, he reportedly burst into tears, no doubt aware that the Tsars of recent memory had rather short shelf lives.