National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

Like many of his followers in the modern school of Russian music, of which he was the actual founder, Glinka had passed the usual age for musical apprenticeship before taking up any serious study of the subject. It was only after some years in a Government post in St. Petersburg, and after a stay in Italy, where he made the acquaintance both of Donizetti and Bellini, that he determined to begin work in earnest on a project of which he had till then, thought only vaguely-a national Russian Opera.
The whole-hearted enthusiasm with which he devoted himself to the task had its reward in the immediate success of his first opera, A Life for the Czar, which is, at the same time, the first, really national opera.
Russian and Ludmilla, of which the Overture is to be heard this evening, was his next opera. Although musically a great advance on the other, it has never had anything like the same popularity, and it is only the Overture which is at all well known outside his native country.

(to 23.00)