A Life for the Tsar. М.И.Глинка опера “Жизнь за царя“ (“Иван Сусанин“)

A Life for the Tsar An Opera in tour Acts Music by Mikhail Glinka from the Bolshoi theatre Moscow Text by baron G. F. Rosen In a version by Evgeny Levashov Producer Nicolai Kuznetsov Designer Valery Levental Ivan Susanin, a peasant Evgeny Nesterenko Antonida, Susanin’s daughter Marina Mescheriakova history Historians rarely mention that Glinka’s masterpiece was inspired by a previous opera, Ivan Susanin, by the Russianized Italian composer Catterino Cavos, staged in St. Petersburg on October 31, 1815. Cavos had a happy ending in which Susanin is saved at the last moment. Glinka let Susanin die, but he kept the outline of the Cavos libretto and the same cast of characters, although he changed their names. The subject was suggested to Glinka by the court poet Zhukovsky, who was to write the libretto but had to abandon the project owing to lack of time. The task was then handed to Baron Rosen, a Baltic German, whose knowledge of Russian, though very thorough, did not i