First produced in 1836, Glinka’s Ivan Susanin or A Life for the Tsar was an immediate success with its winning combination of a patriotic plot – the story of a peasant, Ivan, who gave his life to save that of the Tsar Mikhail, founder of the Romanov dynasty – and nationalist music. On this recording we hear the revised 1939 version in which the emphasis was moved from the young Tsar to the leaders of the uprising against the Poles. The bass Maxim Mikhailov, who was born into a peasant family, became strongly identified with the rôle which he performed over 400 times. The legendary Alexander Melik-Pashayev, the Bolshoy’s chief conductor between 1953 and 1962, did much to extend its repertoire.