Glinka spent three years in Italy from 1830 to 1833. He arrived in Italy as an accomplished musician. Glinka would always remember the musical evenings held in the salon of the Russian envoy, Vorontsov-Dashkov. Here, the composer met the renowned musical family of the Counts Bellgioioso. His main residence was Milan, the capital of opera culture. On 26 December 1830, the winter season opened with two new operas: Bellini’s The Capulets and the Montagues at La Scala and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Teatro Carcano, featuring Rubini and Pasta in the leading roles. These operas formed the basis of Glinka’s first ‘Italian’ compositions, published by Ricordi. It can be observed that one of the themes from the opera The Capulets and the Montagues was subsequently creatively fused with the Russian folk tune Kamarinskaya. This connection is reinforced by subtle intonational, rhythmic, and textural refinements, and thanks to an imitative-polyphonic treatment uncharacteristic of Bellini’s themes, the distinctive features of the polyphony in Kamarinskaya seem to be foreshadowed. A similar influence of Bellini’s melodic style can be traced in an analysis of Vanya’s part in Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar and themes from the opera La Sonnambula. Here, the melody of Italian bel canto is organically fused with the characteristic melodic tone of Russian folk songs. In Italian music, Glinka was drawn to the naturalness and freedom of vocal melodies. By that time, Glinka had already tried his hand at composition, attempting to write operas based on the plots of Walter Scott’s novels in the spirit of Donizetti.
Glinka’s fondest and most cherished memory remained of the lake district of Northern Italy, where one of his finest compositions from his Italian years was written: the Grand Sextet for piano and strings. The composer’s mind here is still under the spell of the operatic stage, and the specific presentation of the themes suggests a closeness to the bel canto vocal style. One need only recall the ‘duet-like presentation of the secondary part in the first movement, with its vivid contrast between the two timbres – baritone and soprano – or the poignantly passionate violin melody from the slow movement, so closely reminiscent of the arias of suffering heroines in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti.
Vivid images of Italy, its nature, and its art appear before us in the bright, energetic sonata-style allegro, where Glinka scatters treasures of cantilenas and sculpturally shaped themes in the languid barcarolle (Andante) and in the stormy, jubilant finale.
Venice captivated Glinka, as evidenced by his magnificent romance, Venetian Night’; the romances ‘Desire’ and ‘The Victor’ were composed at the same time. Glinka’s instrumental works from his Italian period bear the hallmark of that brilliant, virtuosic style which must have particularly impressed his audience in Milan. Intended for concert performance, they demand extraordinary pianistic techniques from the performer.
The great musician experienced conflicting feelings while in Italy – a sense of admiration and a sense of longing. He expressed his love for this country in the remarkable Pathetic Trio. All four movements of the cycle, conceptually linked, sound like the natural development of a single monologue and a single state of mind. This was the last instrumental work Glinka composed in Italy, and at the same time, the final example of this genre in his legacy. He didnot return to the chamber ensemble thereafter. This makes the work all the more interesting and significant, as it marksthe end of his ‘Italian’ period. The finale is unusually compact and concise; Glinka would later employ this technique of a short, closing recapitulation, a ‘reprise-reminder’, in his Spanish Overtures and Waltz-Fantasy. The period of fascination with beautiful Italy was beginning to run its course, followed by a sudden cooling of enthusiasm and a longing to return to his native element, to his native land. The Pathetic Trio can be described as a ‘farewell to Italy’, in which the ‘Russian strings’ resound so expressively.
He never had the opportunity to return to Italy, although Glinka visited Europe in subsequent years. However, it should be noted that the composer’s stay in Italy undoubtedly left a mark on him. Italian themes were always dear to him. The composer prefaced his piano piece, Barcarolle, with an epigraph in Italian. The influence of the Italian opera school is also evident in the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. The character of Farlaf resembles a comic figure from an opéra bouffe. It is no coincidence that the first performer of the role of Farlaf was the Italian bass, Tozi. However, he was unable to fully master the aria, as, though written in the form of a buffo rondo, it contained a Russian folk tongue twister at its heart. In the final years of his life, Glinka took a keen interest in ancient Italian church music; he dreamt of visiting Italy and, in his correspondence with the critic Stasov, who was in Florence at the time, he spared no words in his admiration for Italy’s natural beauty, asked about the peculiarities of the climate in Florence—a city he had not had the chance to visit between 1830 and 1833—and dreamt of seeing Dante’s homeland, but died in Berlin in 1857.
