Today the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is successfully performed on stage.
“Glinka has the same importance in Russian music as Pushkin does in Russian poetry,” wrote scholar and authoritative critic Vladimir Stasov. “Both are great talents, both are the founders of the new Russian artistic creativity, both are deeply national and drew their great strength directly from the indigenous elements of their people, both created a new Russian language: one in poetry, the other in music . .”
They were also connected by muses who had the same last name. Alexander Sergeevich’s poem “I remember a wonderful moment”, dedicated to Anna Kern, is considered the pinnacle of national and world love poetry. Glinka set the immortal lines to music. Thus was born the romance “I remember a wonderful moment.” The composer dedicated it to Kern. But not Anna, but her daughter Catherine. But what surprising somersaults destiny makes.
“It’s not clay, it’s porcelain!”
The son of a wealthy Smolensk landowner studied at the Noble boarding school of St. Petersburg University together with Lev Pushkin. His older brother, Alejandro, visited him frequently. This is how Glinka met the poet. After graduating from boarding school, he worked as deputy secretary of the General Directorate of Railways. And I became interested in music. According to his confession, he “wrote by touch.” The romance “Do not tempt me unnecessarily” with the words of Evgeny Baratynsky brought fame to the aspiring composer. He then set music to Pushkin’s poems “Do not sing, beauty, in front of me.” In total he composed 10 “Pushkin” romances.
Glinka meets Griboedov, Zhukovsky, Delvig, Mitskevich and other emblematic figures of the creative bohemia of St. Petersburg. He becomes a regular at literary evenings: he improvises, plays the piano, sings, delighting everyone. He often communicates with Pushkin. In Germany and Italy he studies music theory and singing.
Returning to his homeland, he decides to create a Russian national opera: “All the works I wrote to please the people of Milan only convinced me that I was not following my own path and that I honestly could not be Italian. The longing for my homeland gradually gave me the idea of writing in Russian.”
The poet Vasily Zhukovsky proposed a story about the Kostroma peasant Ivan Susanin. In 1613, the Poles marched to Kostroma to kill the 16-year-old Tsar Mikhail Romanov. But we got lost. Susanin offered to show the way. And he led his enemies into the swamp, where he died with them.
“A Life for the Tsar” was written in less than a year. The premiere took place in December 1836. The opera was a great success. Nicholas the First called the author to the imperial box, talked for a long time, thanked him together with the empress and presented him with a gold ring with topaz, surrounded by three rows of excellent diamonds.
Immediately after the premiere, Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky and Count Vielgorsky invited the composer to a friendly dinner, where they composed a welcoming “Canon in honor of MI Glinka” together. The hero of the occasion, together with Prince Odoevsky, immediately wrote music.
Pushkin’s verse:
Sing with joy, Russian choir!
A new product has been launched.
Have fun, Russia! Our Glinka –
Not clay, but porcelain!
Inspired by success, the composer sits down to listen to a new opera – “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. Having agreed with the author of the poem of the same name that he would write the libretto. Unfortunately, Pushkin soon died in a duel.
Family scandals over musical role
Glinka with his wife Maria (according to some historians, with his sister). In any case, the composer seems gloomy.
Work on the new opera continued for more than five years. In addition to the death of the poet, Glinka had another important reason for creative stagnation: the loss of inspiration.
Mikhail, 31, accompanied his distant relative, 18-year-old beauty Masha Ivanova, down the aisle. The newlyweds settled in the family estate in Smolensk, in Novospasskoye. It was here that Glinka composed “A Life for the Tsar.” He gave the royal diamond ring to his young wife.
After the triumphant premiere, the Emperor appointed Glinka Kapellmeister (choir or orchestra leader) of the Court Singing Chapel. The couple moved to the capital. It would seem, live and be happy!
But… “After being satiated with the material happiness of living with a young wife,” remembers composer Yuri Arnold, “the lack of harmony between their natures began to become increasingly clear.” Blinded by love, Glinka did not immediately distinguish stupidity, lack of culture and conflict in beauty. I realized too late that the main thing in Marya Petrovna’s life was costumes, balls and carriages. She didn’t understand anything about music, except for small romances. Everything elevated and poetic about her was also inaccessible to him.
The conductor of the Court Chapel had a good salary and a government apartment with firewood. A good amount of money was spent on musical compositions and my mother sent 7,000 rubles a year. Glinka gave all the money to his wife, leaving a negligible amount for unforeseen expenses. But that
everything was not enough. She made scandals because her husband spent a lot of money on musical paper. In the stable there were four beautiful horses with a luxurious carriage in which Maria Petrovna was having fun. And the famous composer, favored by the emperor, trudged around the capital on foot or in a shitty taxi.
Faced with his wife’s subsequent hysteria due to lack of money, Mikhail Ivanovich reasonably suggested keeping two horses instead of four. “Am I a merchant’s wife to ride a pair?” – the wife was indignant. In secular society she was called “the fusion of roses and lilies.” At home, in the mornings, she wandered furiously through the rooms in her husband’s dressing gown, sleepy, careless, dirty, with a chibouk between her teeth, looking for some reason to yell at her husband.
“Poor Misha! – wrote the popular poet and playwright Nestor Kukolnik. – It is bitter for him at home and there is no family happiness. What kind of wife is she to him? And what did she do with him? This sweet, wonderful girl needs to be protected and loved, but she makes him angry and irritated by the minute.
He once said that all poets and artists end badly, like Pushkin, who died in a duel. The composer could not stand it: “Although I do not think that he is smarter than Pushkin, I will not expose my forehead to a bullet because of my wife!”
poor mother-in-law
And soon the mother-in-law moved in with them. “Hey Michelle, don’t bring your mother-in-law home!” – warned the friend who introduced Glinka to Mashenka. The wrong one listened.
“Partly out of arrogance, partly out of an artist’s laziness in dealing with financial disputes, and also to please my wife, I let my poor mother-in-law into the house,” the composer later admitted.
What an ulcer Natalya Ivanovna Goncharova was, who for a long time did not give up her daughter Natalie for Pushkin, but Louise Karlovna surpassed her in all respects. She perhaps became the prototype of jokes about an evil mother-in-law. Fortunately, Kukolnik, who knew the family life of Glinka’s friend, published many of these anecdotes.
A nightmare began in the house. For any trifle, Marya Petrovna yelled at Glinka, and Louise Karlovna hissed at her son-in-law like a samovar. What kind of opera is this?! The composer did not have time for “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. He hung out with the Puppeteer and other friends for weeks, escaping the family hell.
Rumors spread throughout the capital that his wife was cheating on Glinka. She didn’t believe it for a long time. But somehow I fell asleep at home. Suddenly, the spinster mother-in-law entered the room and began talking in German to Louise Karlovna about Mashenka’s date with her mistress.
Glinka did not cause any scandal. The next morning he left home, leaving his wife a letter asking her to separate without quarrels or reproaches. He promised to give away half of her income from now on. She refused to get a divorce.
Glinka’s bas-relief is removed from the Dnepropetrovsk Music Academy building.
you appeared before me
The “fleeting vision” first appeared to the 35-year-old composer in March. 1839 Ekaterina Kern, daughter of Pushkin’s own muse, has just turned 21 years old.
“She is not well, there is some suffering on her pale face,” Glinka wrote in his diary. -But her gaze involuntarily stops on her all the time. Her clear and expressive eyes, her unusually slender figure and a special kind of charm and dignity, spread throughout her whole person, attracted me more and more. I found a way to talk to this sweet girl. She expressed my feelings at that moment extremely intelligently. Soon my feelings were completely shared by dear EK and her meetings with her became more pleasant. Everything in life is counterpoint, that is, the complete opposite. She felt disgust at home, but there was so much life and pleasure on the other side: ardent poetic feelings for EK, which she fully understood and shared.”
Ekaterina Kern became Glinka’s muse and source of inspiration. In addition to “Wonderful Moment”, she dedicated the romance “If I Meet You”, the famous “Waltz-Fantasy” and several other things to her beloved. And most importantly: I finally sat down to watch the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila”.
“Bigamist”
The musician’s muse, Ekaterina Kern, is the daughter of Anna Kern, glorified by Pushkin.
Mikhail Ivanovich was ready to marry Catherine. But he couldn’t because his wife didn’t grant him a divorce. In 1841, hope appeared: it turned out that Maria Petrovna, while her husband was alive, had secretly married the cornet Nikolai Vasilchikov. The story reached the Synod. The composer began working toward a divorce, hoping to get it quickly due to the scandal with his “bigamist.” Not so! Cornet turned out to be the son of a general, a hero of the Patriotic War with Napoleon. And the nephew of the tsar’s favorite, Prince Illarion Vasilchikov. President of the Council of State and the Cabinet of Ministers.
The secret wedding scandal was silenced. The divorce process dragged on. Then Katya became pregnant, she began to get nervous, cry and demand decisive action from her beloved. What could he do if the head of the State Council, the emperor’s favorite, was involved in the story? Glinka made a decision: she gave her beloved a large sum of money to “free” her from an illegitimate child. Anna Kern took her daughter to Lubny to avoid scandal. “For climate change.” They had an abortion there.
Glinka was divorced only five years later. But by then her feelings for Catalina had faded: “The same poetry and the same passion no longer existed.” And until the end of his life he remained single.
But he composed “Ruslan and Lyudmila.” The most brilliant, according to the writer Vikenty Veresaev, of the Russian operas, whose thoughts, emotions and images would be enough for four ordinary operas. In his declining years he began to write the opera “El Bígamo”. But I didn’t have time to complete it. He died in 1857. He was only 52 years old.
Six months after the divorce, the cornet Vasilchikov died, leaving the “bigamist” a large sum of money. Since then, traces of him have been lost.
Ekaterina Kern did not marry for a long time, waiting for Glinka’s return. Only in 1854 she married the lawyer Shokalsky. She gave birth to a son. She soon became a widow and was almost left without means of subsistence. A family friend, State Councilor Grigory Pushkin, the youngest son of Alexander Sergeevich, helped her raise the child. Another zigzag of destiny.
He died in 1904, surviving the composer by almost half a century. Anna Kern’s grandson, the famous scientist, academician, lieutenant general, president of the Russian Geographical Society, Yuli Shokalsky, wrote: “He died at the age of 86 and until the last moment he had clear thoughts and remembered Mikhail Ivanovich constantly and always with a deep feeling of sadness. “She obviously loved him for the rest of her life.”
TO THE POINT
enemy of the square
The Ukrainian authorities have prepared a gift for the anniversary of the great composer. Glinka was declared a “threat to the country’s national security.” Because he is one of the most recognized Russian composers and, therefore, a symbol of Russian culture and a “cultural marker” of the Russian world. Therefore, honoring Glinka in Ukraine is unacceptable.
The main blame lies with the opera “A Life for the Tsar”. “Mikhail Glinka’s choice of this story was not accidental, as it reflects his monarchist beliefs and his Russian patriotism.” The composer was not forgiven for the “Patriotic Song”, which in the 1990s was the anthem of the new Russia.
The Dnepropetrovsk Music Academy named after MI Glinka became simply the Dnieper Music Academy. A bas-relief depicting the composer was removed from the building. Next in line is the bronze monument to Glinka in Zaporozhye. Local deputies voted in favor of its dismantling.
Well, the “Pushkin Fall” has already taken place in the square, dozens of monuments to the poet have been demolished. Now they have taken care of his composer friend.
