Mikhail Glinka

Born in 1804 on the family estate at Novospasskoye in the Smolensk region, he had piano lessons in St Petersburg from John Field and Charles Mayer, absorbed bel canto during three years in Italy, and went to Berlin in 1833 to study counterpoint with Siegfried Dehn. His two operas are A Life for the Tsar, staged in 1836, and Ruslan and Lyudmila, staged in 1842. His orchestral works include Kamarinskaya and the Spanish overtures Jota aragonesa and A Night in Madrid. He died in Berlin in 1857. His family were Polish nobles from the Smolensk lands whose ancestors had taken Orthodox baptism and Russian allegiance while keeping their estates and arms, and at Novospasskoye the boy heard European music played by the serf ensemble his uncle maintained. In Italy he came to know Bellini and Donizetti, and on his travels through Austria, France and Spain he found in Berlioz a conductor willing to put excerpts of his music before a Paris audience.