Olga's Gallery
Ilya Repin.
Portrait of the Composer Mikhail Glinka.
1887. Oil on canvas. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia. More. 
Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich (1804-57), Russian composer, began his career as a civil servant, but a visit to Italy made him eager to study music, which he did in Berlin. On his return to Russia he produced his famous opera A Life for the Tzar (also staged as Ivan Susanin) (1836). His Ruslan and Ludmilla (1842), based on the poem by Alexander Pushkin, pioneered the style of the Russian national school of composers