Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 9,001
"A Life for the Tsar"…
On December 9, 1836, Mikhail Glinka's ...
... opera "Ivan Susanin" was the first time ever performed at Saint Petersburg...:
It is nothing less than the first opera sung entirely in Russian!
Today this opera is commonly known under the title "A Life for the Tsar".
There really was an Ivan Susanin, but whether the story glorified in the opera is true is controversial! For my part, I can't shake the suspicion that the story was put into the world in order to glorify the accession to power of the Romanov dynasty among the common people through a "miracle" and at the same time to legitimize it religiously!
Susanin lived in the 17th century and is said - according to legend - to have warned the later first Romanov tsar Mikhail on a trip to Kostroma in 1612 of a Polish-Lithuanian ambush, so that the later tsar could save himself and hide in a monastery.
Susanin - so the legend continues - led the Polish-Lithuanian Morkommando into a deep forest. The following fanciful 19th-century image tells the story…:
After that - so the legend ends - nothing was ever heard from them again.
Susanin is said to have frozen to death together with the captors in the freezing cold night...:
According to legend, this is said to have happened at this very spot near Kostroma...:
The following year, on July 11, 1613, Mikhail Romanov, miraculously rescued by Susanin, was crowned as Mikhail I, Tsar of Russia...:
And Ivan Susanin is remembered in the town of Kostroma on the Volga...
... this monument...:
On December 9, 1836, Mikhail Glinka's ...
... opera "Ivan Susanin" was the first time ever performed at Saint Petersburg...:
It is nothing less than the first opera sung entirely in Russian!
Today this opera is commonly known under the title "A Life for the Tsar".
There really was an Ivan Susanin, but whether the story glorified in the opera is true is controversial! For my part, I can't shake the suspicion that the story was put into the world in order to glorify the accession to power of the Romanov dynasty among the common people through a "miracle" and at the same time to legitimize it religiously!
Susanin lived in the 17th century and is said - according to legend - to have warned the later first Romanov tsar Mikhail on a trip to Kostroma in 1612 of a Polish-Lithuanian ambush, so that the later tsar could save himself and hide in a monastery.
Susanin - so the legend continues - led the Polish-Lithuanian Morkommando into a deep forest. The following fanciful 19th-century image tells the story…:
After that - so the legend ends - nothing was ever heard from them again.
Susanin is said to have frozen to death together with the captors in the freezing cold night...:
According to legend, this is said to have happened at this very spot near Kostroma...:
The following year, on July 11, 1613, Mikhail Romanov, miraculously rescued by Susanin, was crowned as Mikhail I, Tsar of Russia...:
And Ivan Susanin is remembered in the town of Kostroma on the Volga...
... this monument...:
