Norfolk Symphony Orchestra

Mikhail Glinka’s influence on Russian Music cannot be over-estimated. His first opera, A Life for the Tsar, which became an inspiration as well as a model for the stage works of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others, is strikingly original, although the influence of Italian composers such as Donizetti is discernible. Glinka’s second opus in the genre, Ruslan and Ludmilla, is now a staple of the repertoire for Russian Opera Houses and its overture is a favourite everywhere.

A somewhat pampered early childhood with his grandmother turned Glinka into something of a hypochondriac. Piano studies in St. Petersburg with John Field followed whilst he was still at school and, from 1830, he spent time in Europe. In Milan and later in Vienna and Berlin, he came into contact with a great deal of music as well as meeting Mendelssohn and Berlioz. During this time, Glinka also enjoyed romancing a number of women.

Ruslan and Ludmilla was composed between 1836 and 1842 and is based on a poem by Pushkin, with an opera scenario sketched out in fifteen minutes by a drunk Konstantin Bakhturin. Pushkin had himself intended to write the libretto, but his early death after a duel prevented this and the libretto was completed by a number of authors. The story, full of magic castles, giant talking heads and seductive maidens, tells of Ruslan’s adventures to find Ludmilla who has been kidnapped by the evil dwarf sorcerer, Chernomor.

The energetic overture foreshadows the clash of good and evil that pervades the opera. The second theme comes from Ruslan’s aria and the main theme is a combination of two themes from Act 5. Chernomor is represented by the chords which change around a single note, later to be used during Ludmilla’s abduction, as well as by a supernatural sounding downward whole-tone scale (moving by whole rather than half steps) in the bass towards the end.