Who wrote the operas 'A Life for the Tsar' and 'Russian and Ludmilla'?
A Life for the Tsar gave his life in the expulsion of the invading Polish army for the newly elected Tsar Mikhail, the first of the Romanov dynasty, elected in 1613. The plot of "A Life for the Tsar" had been used earlier in 1815, when Catterino Cavos, an Italian-Russian composer, had written a two-act singspiel with the same subject and title. The original title of the opera was to be "Ivan Susanin", after the 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.
A Life for the Tsar 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.