Mikhail Glinka

Born in 1804 in Novospasskoe, in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire, Mikhail Glinka developed—between Saint Petersburg and his travels in Europe—a compositional voice that links opera, the romance, symphonic music and chamber music. Trained early on in piano and violin and later marked by stays in Milan, Berlin, Paris and Spain, Glinka absorbed the Italian bel canto, German contrapuntal technique and various folk traditions, which he reworked into a personal language founded on melodic clarity, orchestral color and the use of Russian themes. His career reached a turning point with the operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), two scores central to the history of 19th‑century Russian opera. Glinka also composed orchestral pieces such as the Aragonese Jota (1845), Kamarinskaya (1848), Souvenir of a Summer Night in Madrid (1851) and the Waltz‑Fantasy, as well as an important repertoire of romances, including I Remember That Wonderful Moment (1840). Close to the literary circles of his time and connected with Pushkin and Zhukovsky, Glinka died in Berlin in 1857, having left a lasting mark on Russian musical life.