Mikhail Glinka
Overture to “Ruslan and Ludmilla”
Mikhail Glinka is considered to be the father of modern Russian music. His nationalistic, Russian style was a seminal influence on all Russian composers who followed, from Rimsky-Korsakov to Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky.
Born into a wealthy family, Glinka left his life as a government bureaucrat in his late twenties to pursue music, studying in Italy and Berlin. In 1834 he returned to Russia and rediscovered his Russian heritage, reading the works of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. From this, he was inspired to write his first important work, the opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), the story of a young Russian hero who, at the expense of his own life, saves the Tsar from a group of Polish kidnappers. The work drew on Russian and Polish folk themes, and also prefigured the use of the leitmotif–a recurring theme for a particular character–that Richard Wagner would refine in his operas.
A Life for the Tsar met with immediate popular success, and the director of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg suggested that Glinka adapt Pushkin’s epic poem, Ruslan and Ludmilla, as his next opera. The poem tells of the abduction of Ludmilla by an evil sorcerer, Chernomor, from a party given for Ludmilla’s three suitors, one of whom is Ruslan. Each suitor rides off to save the girl, encountering a fantastic assortment of witches, hermits, magic castles, enchanted gardens, magic swords, and so forth, rather in the style of the tales of the Arabian Nights. The sorcerer is vanquished in the end by Ruslan, who revives Ludmilla from a trance and wins her hand in marriage.
Glinka agreed to write the opera, but before he could begin Pushkin was killed in a duel. The composer began the work without a librettist, and although eventually one was found, Glinka wasn’t satisfied with the libretto and not only called in other writers to work on it, but rewrote some sections himself. The result was a plot that was grandiose and rambling, and the opera was not as successful as its predecessor, being withdrawn from the repertoire in 1848, six years after its premiere in 1842. However, Ruslan and Ludmilla was eventually recognized as a stronger work musically than Tsar, and the composer Mily Balakirev produced a complete, uncut staging in Prague in 1867.
The opera is a musicological travelogue, with themes based on Russian, Finnish, Tartar, and Persian music, all brilliantly orchestrated. Folk songs represent Ruslan’s Russia, while whole-tone harmonies depict the magical world of the sorcerer Chernomor. Glinka’s inspiration for the overture was particularly down-to-earth. He attended a wedding dinner at the Russian court, and later wrote: “I was up in the balcony, and the clattering of knives, forks and plates made such an impression on me that I had the idea to imitate them in the prelude to Ruslan. I later did so, with fair success.” The overture consists of two main themes, the first driving and rhythmic (one hopes the servants at the dinner Glinka attended weren’t really hustling at this speed!), the second more lyrical and reminiscent of courtly dances.