主题：[推荐]俄罗斯民族乐派的灵魂人物----格林卡(原版英文简介)

Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Михаи́л Ива́нович Гли́нка) (June 1, 1804 – February 15, 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition inside his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music.

His most significant works are the two operas: A Life for the Tsar (Žizn' za carja) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (Ruslan i Ljudmila), based on the famous poem by Aleksandr Pushkin (who was originally supposed to write the libretto, but died in the famous duel); the overture to Ruslan is often played in concerts. His major orchestral works include the symphonic poem Karaminskaya, based on Russian folk tunes, and two Spanish works, A Night in Madrid and Jota Aragonesa. Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of the Mighty Handful, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctively Russian kind of classical music.

Life Glinka was the son of a wealthy merchant. This afforded him the opportunity to spend much of his youth being schooled in many countries across Europe where he soaked up the culture of the more musically advanced European countries (Russia did not yet have its own conservatories). His education in music theory was minimal, for he chose instead to associate himself with the poets and artists of the time instead of fellow composers.

During this period there was little to no Russian national music. Instead, the aristocracy, including the Imperial family, had been importing their music from the major musical countries such as Germany, France, and Italy and having native Russian composers study and write music mostly in Western styles. Inspired by the work of Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti, Glinka set out to write the first wholly Russian opera.

Operas His first opera, A Life for the Tsar was originally to be titled Ivan Susanin, after the title character; the plot had been used earlier in 1815, when Catarino Cavos, an Italian-Russian composer, had written a two-act singspiel with the same subject and title. Glinka changed the title to A Life for the Tsar as a monarchy-pleasing gesture. It premiered in 1836 -- under the conductorship of none other than Cavos! -- with a libretto by Nestor Kukolnik, V. Sollogub, George von Rosen, and V. Zhukovsky. It was immediately hailed as a great success, and became the obligatory season-opener in the Imperial Russian opera theaters. It was one of the first Russian operas to be widely accepted outside Russia. Several passages in the opera are based on Russian folk songs or idioms, but most of the opera was structured according to the conventional Italian and French models of the period. It served as the basis for later historical operas such as Musorgsky's Boris Godunov. In Soviet times the original text of this opera became an embarrassment, so the title reverted to "Ivan Susanin" and the libretto was rewritten by Sergei Gorodetsky (1939) to remove references to the Tsar and otherwise make the opera politically acceptable.

Glinka's second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila was completed and premiered in 1842. This work did not fair nearly as well as its predecessor in Glinka's time; its failure disappointed the composer greatly. The opera is characterized by its liberal use of folk songs as well as some innovative use of dissonance, chromaticism, and whole-tone scales. Nevertheless, this second opera confirmed the existence of a Russian national classical style that was to be built upon by the next generation of Russian composers. In particular, it served as the model for the operatic fairy-tales of Rimsky-Korsakov.