Composer Glinka

Plot

The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at Count Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. The disappointed Glinka decides to go learn the art of music in Italy.

After returning from Italy, he is full of desire to write a Russian opera. Vasily Zhukovsky proposes a subject: an exploit of Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I changes the name of the opera to A Life for the Tsar and assigns a librettist - Baron Georg von Rosen.

When Glinka meets him, he is shocked: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere is successful, but Glinka is still not entirely happy with the libretto: "Rosen wrote the wrong words".

When the tsar learns that Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is based on a subject by Pushkin, he sees it as sedition. This is a bitter experience for Glinka, but he is comforted by the support of "the progressive Russian people."

Cast

Boris Smirnov as Mikhail Glinka

Lev Durasov as Alexander Pushkin

Lyubov Orlova as Lyudmila Glinka

Yury Lyubimov as Alexander Dargomyzhsky

Georgy Vitsin as Nikolai Gogol

Konstantin Nassonov as Vasily Zhukovsky

Igor Litovkin as Alexander Griboyedov

Andrei Popov as Vladimir Stasov

Yuri Yurovsky as prince Mikhail Vielgorsky

Sergei Vecheslov as Vladimir Odoyevsky

Sviatoslav Richter as Franz Liszt

Bella Vinogradova as Giuditta Pasta

Alexander Sashin-Nikolsky as Dmitry Petrov

Mikhail Nazvanov as Nicholas I of Russia

Irina Likso as Empress Alexandra Feodorovna

Pavel Pavlenko as Thaddeus Bulgarin

Vladimir Saveliev as Karl Ivanovich

Faina Shevchenko as wife of Karl Ivanovich

Rina Zelyonaya as general's wife

Radner Muratov as bellhop in the theater

Gennady Yudin as Hector Berlioz

Anatoly Papanov as adjutant of the Grand Duke

Sergei Kurilov as Karl Bryullov

Awards

1953 Locarno International Film Festival

Won: Golden Leopard