Ruslan and Lyudmila

Infos :

After the extraordinary success of his Opera “A Life for the Tsar” (or “Ivan Susanin”) in 1836, Mikhail I. Glinka (1804-1857) immediately considered composing a second opera. Pushkin’s early poetic fairy-tale “Ruslan and Lyudmilla” was to become the subject, and Glinka hoped the poet might prepare the libretto for him. The composer began work on the opera in 1837, the libretto not yet being complete and the poet’s tragic death forcing him to turn to amateur poets from among his friends and acquaintances. Unlike the literary source material which was written with the irony and light humour of a young rake (Pushkin began the work when still a lyceum pupil and planned to rewrite it several times as a result), the opera is epic in character, monumental images of Old Russian bogatyrs blended together with the fairytale oriental flavour of Chernomor’s kingdom, the abundance of crowd scenes setting off the protagonists’ famous arias which have become jewels in the treasure casket of Russian music, as has done the brilliant overture.