The great composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was born in the Novospasskoye village. It is situated in the Smolensk Guberniya of the Russian Empire not far from the river named Desna. The father of composer was a wealthy man. He was retired army captain. His family was under the strong auspices of the Tsar. Several members of his family had developed a big interest in culture as well. In the childhood of Mikhail Glinka was reared by his pampering and over-protective grandmother. She, wrapped him in furs, fed him candies. She also confined him to room of her own. His room always kept temperature 25°C (77°F). As a result, he had many problems with his health in future. The folk songs of choirs and sounds of the church bells of the village were the only music, that he heard in his childhood. His ears got used to strident sound of dissonant chord of the church bells. His nurse sometimes sung folksongs. That led him to using “podgolosnaya”(“under-voiced” in translation) technique (an improvised style which below the melody uses dissonant improvised harmonies). When his grandmother died, Glinka moved to his maternal uncle’s house some 10 km away. He used to hear his uncle’s orchestra, whose wide repertoire included music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. He was nearly ten when he heard the play of a clarinet quintet by Bernhard Henrik Crusell, the Finnish composer. It had a great influence on him. He wrote later that music is his soul. While his teacher taught him German, French, Russian and geography, he also studied the play on the violin and piano.

He was sent to Saint Petersburg at the age of 13. In the capital he studied at a school for children with nobility. Here he taught English, Latin and Persian, zoology and mathematics. He also improved his musical studying. He was lucky to have three piano lessons from the Irish composer, John Field. This composer spent some time in Saint Petersburg. Later Glinka continued the piano lessons with famous at the moment musician Charles Meyer. Then he began composing.

After finishing school, his father expressed a desire for him to join the Foreign Office, and that is how he became an assistant secretary in the Department of Public Highways. This work was not hard. And it allowed Mikhail to continue a life of a musical dilettante. At that moment he was already composing a significant amount of music, in such genres as melancholy romances for example. The songs of this period are the most interesting.

In 1830 Glinka went with the tenor Nikolay Ivanov to Italy. The road of the trip laid through Switzerland and Germany, before they stayed in Milan. Glinka took there lessons with Francesco Basili at the conservatory, while he struggled with counterpoint – the pastime that he considered boring. He was disappointed with Italy, although he spent there three years, romancing women with his own music, listening to singers of the day, and also meeting many well-known people including Berlioz and Mendelssohn. He understood that his mission was to return to Russia and do Russian music as Bellini and Donizetti did Italian music. His road laid through the Alps, and once he stopped for a some time in Vienna, where he wanted to hear the music of composer Franz Liszt. For another 5 months he stayed in Berlin. At this time, he studied composition of Siegfried Dehn. The products of this period are unfinished Symphony on 2 Russian themes and Capriccio on Russian themes for piano duet.

He returned to Novospasskoye in 1834, when his father died.

While Glinka was in Berlin, he had fallen with love with a talented and beautiful singer. He composed 6 Studies for Contralto for this woman. He decided to return to her, but he couldn’t get necessary paperwork for crossing the border. He abandoned his his love and his plan and came back to Saint Petersburg. There he came back to his mother, and met Maria Petrovna Ivanova. They married soon. The marriage wasn’t long, because Maria was not interested in his music. Although his love to her had inspired the trio in the 1st act of opera named ‘A Life for the Tsar’ (1836), his naturally sweet disposition roughened under the constant irritating of her mother and his wife. After separating Glinka moved in with mother, and later Lyudmila Shestakova, his sister.

The first of Glinka's two great operas was A Life for the Tsar. It was naned Ivan Susanin at the beginning. It was set in 1612. It tells the story of the Russian hero Ivan Susanin. This hero gave his life for the Tsar by leading astray a group of hunting him Poles. The premiere brought the real success on December 9, 1836. It’s director was Catterino Cavos. He also wrote an opera on the same theme in Italy. At this time music was considered more Italian than Russian. Glinka showed excellent work. The Tsar brought award to Glinka for his work with a ring valued at 4000 rubles.

In 1837 Glinka became instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir, with a salary of 25,000 roubles per year. At the suggestion of the Tsar in 1838 he went to Ukraine to find new voices for the choir. The 19 new boys he found brought another 1,500 roubles from the Tsar to him.

He created his second opera soon: Ruslan and Lyudmila. The plot was based on the tale by Pushkin. It was combined by Konstantin Bakhturin in 15 minutes. The poet was drunk at the time. This opera got the higher quality than A Life for the Tsar. He uses a dropping whole-tone-scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the Chernomor who has kidnapped Lyudmila, daughter of the Kiev’s Prince. There is much Italianate coloratura, and Act 3 includes several routine ballet numbers. The using of folk melody is his great achievement in this opera. After that folk melody was used be many composors. 9 December 1842, when it was first produced, it met with a cool reception.

The great composer went through a hard year after the cool reception of Ruslan and Lyudmila. He became feel after his trip to Spain and Paris. In Spain, Glinka met Don Pedro Fernandez. He remained his secretary and companion for the last nine years of his life. Berlioz conducted some excerpts from Glinka’s operas In Paris and wrote an positive article about him. After this Glinka composed a few fantasies pittoresques for orchestra. In 1852 he visited Paris again. This visit lasted 2 years. During this period the composer visited zoological and botanical gardens. He went to Berlin from there. He suddenly died in Berlin on 15th of February in 1857, following a cold. He was buried in Berlin but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Glinka is a great compositor. His works made him famous throughout the world.