A Life for the Tsar
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A Life for the Tsar is a "patriotic-heroic tragic" opera in four acts with an epilogue by Mikhail Glinka. During the Soviet era the opera was known under the name Ivan Susanin, due to the anti-monarch
Osip Petrov as Ivan Susanin in the premiere
Set design for the epilogue
Feodor Chaliapin as Ivan Susanin
Chaliapin F. 1900х as Ivan Susanin in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar
Michael of Russia
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Michael I was Tsar of all Russia from 1613 after being elected by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 until his death in 1645. He was the first tsar of the House of Romanov, which succeeded the House of Rurik fo
A Life for the Tsar
…plot involves Ivan Susanin, a patriotic hero of the early 17th century who died in the expulsion of the invading Polish army for the newly elected Tsar Michael of Russia, the first of the Romanov dynasty, elected in 1613. The plot of A Life for the Tsar had been used earlier in 1815, when Catterino Cavos, an Italian-Russian…
Johann Heinrich Wedekind's copy of a portrait, 1636
Michael at a young age
Sixteen-year-old Michael being offered the crown at the Ipatiev Monastery in 1613, painting by Grigory Ugryumov
Michael offered Monomakh's Cap and scepter by Kuzma Minin, protected by Dmitry Pozharsky