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'It just reeks of Italianism': Traces of Italian Opera in 'A Life for the Tsar'
- Music and Letters
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 91, Number 3, August 2010
- pp. 376-405
- Article
- Additional Information
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Although it is almost a truism nowadays to say that the style of Mikhail Glinka's operas is Italianate, little effort has yet been made to investigate this aspect of his work in any detail. A comparison of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar (1836) with contemporary Italian operas not only offers insights into his compositional methods, but also provides a more nuanced view of the construction of Russian national music by showing the complexity of Glinka's relation with contemporary bel canto opera.