The 19th century Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka ranks as the founder of a distinctive national style of Russian classical music, and as the composer of the first great Russian opera, which premiered in St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1836.

That opera tells the story of Ivan Susanin, a folk hero of the early 17th century, who gave his life to protect the newly elected Tsar Mikhail, the first of the Romanov dynasty. Glinka’s original title for his opera was “Ivan Susanin,” but when the then-current Tsar Nicholas I attended a rehearsal of its premiere, the composer changed it to “A Life for the Tsar,” to honor – and frankly flatter the current ruler in the Romanov line.

After the Bolshevik Revolution deposed Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and executed his whole family the following year, any opera praising the Romanovs, no matter how culturally significant, was unperformable in the Soviet Union. But in 1939, when St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad, Glinka’s opera returned to Russian stages under its original title “Ivan Susanin,” thanks to a Soviet poet who removed all references to the Tsar from its libretto and adjusted its storyline to be “politically correct” for Stalinist Russia.

These days, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Leningrad is St. Petersburg once again, and when Glinka’s landmark opera is staged there, it’s under its original title and with its original, pro-Tsarist storyline restored.