The Mariinsky Theatre will commemorate its 155th anniversary with Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar, directed by Dmitry Chernyakov on 24 November.
It is rightly considered that Russian classical music began with A Life for the Tsar. The opera’s history has always been associated with St Petersburg; its premiere took place in November 1836 at the Bolshoi (Stone) Theatre in St Petersburg, and a quarter of a century later on 2 October 1860 it was this opera that opened the first season at the new building called the Mariinsky Theatre as we know it today. Built on the site of the Circus Theatre which burnt down, it quickly became a centre of musical life in the imperial capital.
A Life for the Tsar both in imperial times and in the Soviet era had the role of the most important patriotic Russian opera. The idea of a man of the people, dying heroically for the sake of his country, was central to both versions of the libretto – the original, written for Glinka by Baron Yegor von Rozen, and the reworked version by Sergei Gorodetsky in 1939 when A Life for the Tsar was renamed Ivan Susanin.
Chernyakov’s production is one of three operas he has staged at the Mariinsky Theatre: in 2001 he made his debut with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia, while in 2005 he staged a production of Tristan und Isolde by Wagner. The new version of A Life for the Tsar (premiered in 2004) was received by the critics as one of the most important events in Russian musical theatre.
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