Gilbert Doctorow

As those who have been reading my travel notes on Substack this past week will know, last night my wife and I attended a performance of Mikhail Glinka’s 1836 opera ‘A Life for the Tsar’ at the historic Mariinsky-1 theater. This was a special event for a very special opera, which, as I have noted, was in tsarist times the opening number of each opera season in the imperial theaters.

The presentation of this rarely performed opera last night was timed with the celebration of Nation Day on 12 June. There were fireworks and speechifying across Russia to mark the event. Exactly what was being celebrated is the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the consolidation of national sovereignty of the Russian Federation. Nation Day dates from June 1992.

‘A Life for the Tsar’ was also created as a celebration of national sovereignty. It retells the story of gaining independence from the Polish invaders who took advantage of the dynastic crisis that followed the death of Ivan the Terrible and murder of his young surviving son Dmitry. The Poles promoted to the throne a False Dmitry, that is, a pretender who alleged that he had escaped the assassination, and who rode into Moscow in the company of his Polish wife and with the support of the Polish army and Polish clergy, who intended to convert the Russian heathens (from their perspective). The False Dmitry and his Polish backers were chased from Moscow but Polish ambitions to take control of Russia persisted and this opera depicts their last efforts. In effect, in 1613 Russian sovereignty was fully restored under the new Romanov tsar.

In what follows, I offer a political and also musicological review of last night’s show, which, as I had foretold, was an excellent barometer of the level of patriotic feelings in the broad Russian public in this fifth year of war.

Some readers will take what I am about to say as proof positive that I am wrong about Putin’s ratings having fallen to abysmal levels. Others among you will accept my interpretation that Russian patriotism and Putin’s popularity are NOT one and the same thing.

Just a reminder to those who are not students of music history, least of all Russian music history, this particular opera marked the start of real Russian opera. De facto, operas were performed in 18^th century Russia at court and in high society. They were mostly imports from Europe performed by local singers. However, in the 19^th century, when Russia had achieved recognition across Europe as a major Continental power thanks to its defeat of Napoleon and liberation of Europe, the Russian arts began to flourish, including in the sphere of music and opera in particular. In this opera, Glinka put Russian peasants on the imperial stage for the first time and set out for the audience what we may call the ideology of tsarism, that is the God-given connection between the ruler and his people, who see him as a Messenger of God and uniting force for the ‘Rus,’ that is to say the historic nation with its capital in Moscow. Though Glinka was a great borrower of Italian composition methods, he incorporated Russian folk melodies and choral singing into this work and it was a great novelty at the time.

He also inserted into the work a half hour ballet segment set in the royal court of Poland. This was used to highlight the distinction between the Russian folk milieu in provincial Kostroma that all other scenes portray versus the aristocratic Polish enemy who sought to kidnap the newly elected tsar Mikhail Romanov, founder of the dynasty that took Russia to 1917, and to install in Moscow their own puppet regime.

From the perspective of 2026, this opera shows the historic continuity of Russia’s military conflict with the immediate West, Poland-Lithuania, over the course of more than 400 years. It has special piquancy in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war in which Poland is a leading promoter of war on Russia. And the pejorative used against the opera’s hero, the provincial man of the people Ivan Susanin, that he is a ‘Moskal,’ a demeaning term for Muscovite, could sound on the lips of Zelensky with equal venom today.

Note that the Polish aristocracy portrayed in the ‘Polish balletic scene’ of this opera are dressed in the latest European fashion of their day. They display gallantry in their formulaic dances, many of which end with the gentleman kneeling at the feet of his female dancing partner.

By contrast, the stage director has chosen to depict the life of Susanin and family as being homely, with much time spent in planing wood (male occupation) or kneeding dough for bread (female occupation).

The stage director of this 2004 production in the Mariinsky was the bad boy of Russian opera Dmitry Chernyakov who in the Noughties, up to 2014 and the sanctions on Russia, was the darling of Western European theaters and produced what I call ‘Eurotrash,’ meaning utter disregard for the settings and period of a given opera and enthusiasm in putting machine guns in the hands of 18^th century warriors. I am told that in the original 2004 premiere of this opera there were such machine guns in the hands of the Polish invaders when they sought out the newly elected tsar in his Kostroma estate. That has, fortunately been removed from the latest production that I saw last night.

When I first mentioned the opera earlier this week, I called it a monument to Russian national consciousness just as Verdi’s opera ‘Nabucco’ with its ‘Va pensiero’ segment is deemed to be the voice of the Italian Risorgimento and always brings Italian opera goers to their feet in calls for a second round. To be sure, Nabucco is about the Jews during their Babylonian Captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, though everyone understands that this was a way to avoid state censorship while actually calling for Italian unification.

Last night demonstrated that the Russian national awakening and ideology is somewhat different. Since it was imperially sponsored, this opera did not have to cover its intentions by placing the action in some exotic setting. This is a Russia that loves its tsar and stands ready to sacrifice lives for his protection.

Last night’s show lasted 4 and a half hours, of which one hour was the two intervals when the audience could go take refreshments in the buffets. The performers were of high quality, especially the lead baritone playing Susanin. The chorus was excellent. The youngish conductor did well to bring out the brightness of the brass dominated composition. But there were few pauses for audience applause during the show. At the end, all of the stored up emotion poured out freely. For the first time in my memory the whole audience rose to its feet to salute the performers, with many cries of ‘Bravo!’ resounding and many curtain calls.

Was this a resounding vote of support for today’s tsar? I leave open that possibility, but I insist that Russian patriotism and its current revulsion with the junta headed by Zelensky that is conducting all-out war on today’s ‘Moskaly’ are not the same as Putin worship. Indeed, this very patriotism could bring down the present regime because of the way the war is being dragged out and casualties are mounting.

By a curious trick of fate, my trip back to my hotel by taxi provided a direct counterpoint to the patriotism I had just witnessed in the theater. My wife and I were picked up by a limousine quality black KIA taxi that I had ordered by APP on my phone in ‘comfort class.’ In response to my wife’ comment to the driver that his car was very impressive, he said; ‘your husband must love you very much to have ordered this quality car;’ From that remark, we knew at once we were dealing with a Central Asian because that way of thinking is typical of the region, not of Russian males.

Our driver was chatty and asked where we, meaning clearly my wife, were from. He was pleased to hear that she was born, grew up and was educated in Leningrad, and he did not hesitate to tell us that he came from Kyrgyzstan. Indeed several Yandex drivers we have met in the past weeks were from there. This fellow is in his 50s and told us he has been living and working in Russia for 20 years.

My wife asked him if he returns to his native land and he acknowledged that he does go back fairly often, that it is just a 5 hour flight and there are daily flights.

And how is it there, my wife asked? He said that salaries are very low but if you have money then you can live well, just as is the case everywhere.’If only there is no war,’ he added.

That comment, of course, headed our conversation in the direction of the current Russia-Ukraine war. He told us, very calmly, that he knows many people who have died in this war fighting for Russia. Many were Kyrghyz living in Russia, officers serving in the military it would appear. He spoke calmly, not judgmenally, matter of fact, I would say.

So when you get into a discussion with strangers the subject very easily turns to what is on people’s minds, which is the war, and stopping it sooner rather than later.

By the way, in 1836 when Glinka composed his ‘Life for the Tsar,’ Russia was at war in its conquest of the Caucasus which lasted more than 50 years. What else is new?