[9] The first performance of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar took place here in November of that year.
[10] Possibly Madox.
[11] Sometimes written Astaritta.
[12] In Grove’s Dictionary of Music I give the date of Alabiev’s birth as August 30th, 1787, following most of the approved authorities of the day. But more recent investigations have revealed the correct date as August 4th.
[13] Soloveiv asserts that Sousanin did not save the Tsar from the Poles but from the Russian Cossacks who had become demoralised during the long interregnum.
[14] This fragment of a familiar melody drew down on Glinka the criticism of an aristocratic amateur that the music of A Life for the Tsar was fit for coachmen and serfs, and provoked Glinka’s sarcastic retort: “What matter, since the servants are better than their masters.”
[15] The appearance of the Commandatore is accompanied by a sinister progression as thrilling in its way as that strange and horrible chord with which Richard Strauss leads up to Salome’s sacrilegious kiss in the closing scene of this opera.
[16] Balakirev, Cui, Moussorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov.
[17] In Vek (The Century). No. I.
[18] In Severnoy Pchela (The Northern Bee).