Yup, here we go. It's not the first-ever Russian opera, but it was the one that established Russian opera as its own distinctive thing. Or so I am told by the internet, which Knows All.
The life in question is a peasant, Ivan Susanin. There's a new Tsar, and his, Ivan's, daughter is going to get married! So that's fun. But Holy Rus is being menaced by the evil Poles! That's bad (sorry, Maciek; that's just the way it goes). They want to capture the new Tsar, which would also be bad, but when they demand that Susanin show them where he is, he leads them off in the wrong direction into the forest while his son Vanya goes to warn the Tsar that he's gotta get going. When the Poles learn that Susanin tricked them, they kill him, but the Tsar is safe! Woo patriotism!
Obviously, the sensibilities of the piece are not my own. Don't sacrifice yourself for the Tsar, Susanin! He doesn't care about you! You owe him nothing! Also, there's a scene where Vanya, who is young, is eager to grow up so he can join the army and his dad's like, yeah! Great! Think of all the glory you'll earn and SERIOUSLY dude, don't encourage your son to go abroad fighting for strangers! That is never a good idea!
But to be clear, none of this really bothered me; I got swept up in the drama and enjoyed the opera a lot. What's not to like? In particular, Susanin's aria as he's preparing for death when the Poles notice his perfidy is very powerful. Act II takes place amongst the Poles, and the bulk of it is a lengthy ballet sequence where Glinka presumably thought, well hell, I've got all these bangin' tunes; might as well stick them in there. So it may be some comfort to know that, while the Poles are the villains, they've got some great music. Also--a highly specific milestone--I think this is the first time I've seen a trouser role in a Russian opera: Vanya is a contralto role, although here, big surprise, it's sung by a mezzo. It's a good production, though; it's a movie from the Bolshi Opera from sometime in the nineties, and Evgeny Nesterenko shines as Susanin.
Are you perhaps thinking, "huh, 'a life for the Tsar.' I wonder if this presented a dilemma for the Soviet government, which obviously wanted to celebrate Russia's cultural heritage but at the same time has no use whatsoever for Tsars?" That's probably what you're thinking. Well, apparently during the Soviet era this was performed with a revised libretto that removes the Tsar altogether. Do I understand how that could possibly work? Not really! But the music probably still made it worth seeing even in bowdlerized form.
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