A Life for the Tsar is not the first opera created in Russia, but it is the first Russian opera. That is no pun, but rather the essence of a turnabout that took place in in the history of Russian music following the premiere of this operatic masterpiece on 27 November 1836 at the Bolshoi (Stone) Theatre (the site is now occupied by the building of the St Petersburg Conservatoire). Operas had been written by Russian composers long before Glinka: The Carriage Accident by Vasily Pashkevich, The Miller Who Was a Wizard, a Cheat and a Matchmaker by Mikhail Sokolovsky and The Novgorod Hero Boyeslayevich and The Coachmen at the Horse Stage-Post by Yevstignei Fomin. But even Russian plots and the timid and enlightened pathos of these activities could not shed the genre of opera of its status as an imported product where everything – the dramaturgy, musical language and manner of singing – remained true to the “refined” Italian framework. Moreover, in the 18th century opera remained an entertainment for high society...