89. A Life for the Tsar (Mikhail Glinka)

• Жизнь за царя
• By Mikhail Glinka
• Libretto: Nestor Kukolnik, Egor Fyodorovich (von) Rozen, Vladimir Sollogub, Vasily Zhukovsky
• First composed: Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, St Petersburg, 9 December 1836

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IVAN SUSANIN, a peasant of the village of Domnino	Bass	Osip Petrov
ANTONIDA, his daughter	Soprano	Mariya Stepanova
VANYA, Susanin’s adopted son	Contralto	Anna Petrova-Vorobyova
BOGDAN SOBININ, a militiaman, Antonida’s fiancé	Tenor	Lev Leonov
Commander of the Polish detachment	Bass	Sergey Baykov
A Polish courier	Tenor	I. Makarov
Commander of the Russian detachment	Bass	Aleksey Yefremov
Peasant men and women, militiamen, Polish nobles and ladies, knights	Chorus and silent

SETTING: Russia; the autumn of 1612 and the winter of 1613

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Mikhail Glinka’s two operas – this and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) – are landmarks in Russian music. A Life for the Tsar points the way to the historical epics of Mussorgsky and Borodin (and, in its Soviet revision as Ivan Susanin, to social realist opera celebrating peasants, like Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko), while Ruslan looks forward to Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairytale operas.

Mussorgsky considered Glinka “the immortal creator of a Russian musical school who first pointed out the path of truth”, while Tchaikovsky hailed him as “the cornerstone of Russian music”. In the West, Berlioz esteemed him for his style, harmonic knowledge, and especially for the freshness and novelty of his ideas; Liszt wrote transcriptions and variations of his operas; and Meyerbeer attended his funeral.

A Life for the Tsar is the first truly “Russian” opera: a historical pageant full of patriotic exhortations. Briefly, the peasant Ivan Susanin outwits the extravagantly moustachioed Poles at the cost of his life to save the first Romanov Tsar, Mikhail.

Like Rossini‘s Guillaume Tell, its hero (bass) is a sturdy man of the people who resists the storm of a foreign invader. (Act I is modelled on Tell dramatically.) There is much emphasis on betrothals, weddings, the immemorial traditions of village life, in a pastoral idyll undisturbed by violence. The hero’s (adopted) son (a travesti rôle) saves the day at the end.

But it’s dramatically rather weak: all the Russians are good, and the Poles are a menacing, faceless chorus. It’s also hard at the moment to feel much sympathy for its Russian nationalist message, given current events, or its vilification of the Poles.

Tchaikovsky called it “the first and best Russian opera”, “with ideally graceful, extraordinarily fine and poetic instrumentation”. It was “something truly overwhelming, gigantic”. There were, Tchaikovsky believed, more musical gems in Ruslan, “but the elemental force maintains itself more strongly in the first opera”.  

Musically, much of it is glorious. The Act I introduction contains a memorable a cappella chorus of peasants vowing to die for the Tsar, for Rus, then joined by women; Antonida’s Cavatine (a melancholy andante in A flat) and Rondo (a buoyant allegro); and the beautiful cantabile trio “Ne tomi rodimiy” in D flat.

Much of Act II (the Polish act) is taken up with ballet, essentially a divertissement. There is a brilliant chorus to the tune of a polonaise, then 20 minutes of dancing (notably the Krakowienne and the Mazurka). Glinka was captivated by the effect of contrasting the Polish mazurka’s triple metre with the long-drawn out melancholy of the folk song, Tchaikovsky noted.

Act III opens with Vanya’s duet with Susanin, “Menja ty na Rusi vozlejal”; it is a blatant propaganda piece, in which Susanin encourages his adopted son to grow up quickly so he can fight for the Tsar, but attractive. The wedding quartet (No. 11), “Antonida! Miliye dyeti!”, is one of the finest ensembles in opera (B flat, moderato in G). After Susanin is taken, Antonida has a moving romance (adagio in B flat). Ivan’s impressive Act IV aria is the first of many in Russian opera for low male voices (e.g., Borodin’s Prince Igor). For Tchaikovsky, the Glory (“Slav’sya!”) chorus at the end of Act IV was “that work of arch-genius, which is on a par with the highest manifestations of the creative spirit of great geniuses”.

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Recordings

Listen to: Boris Martinovich (Susanin), Alexandrina Pendatchanska (Antonida), Chris Merritt (Sobinin), and Stefania Toczyska (Vanya), with the Sofia National Opera Chorus and Sofia Festival Orchestra, conducted by Emil Tchakarov, 1989.

Watch: Evgeny Nesterenko (Susanin), Marina Mescheriakova (Antonida), Alexander Lomonosov (Sobinin), and Elena Zaremba (Vanya), with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Alexander Lazarev, 1992.