Opera
The 19th century was the time when Nationalism was important. Composers were writing music typical of their own countries. Wagner, as we have seen, took German myths for his opera stories. In Spain they had their own kind of opera called “zarzuela”. In Russia Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) wrote Ruslan and Lyudmila which was based on a Russian fairy tale. Other Russian composers include Alexander Borodin who wrote Prince Igor, and Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) who wrote Boris Godunov. Both these operas are about stories from Russian history. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) wrote a fairy tale opera Sadko, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) used some very Russian tunes in Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.