Mikhail Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, Smolensk province.

Mikhail Glinka wrote the first national Russian opera - "Life for the Tsar", became one of the founders of Russian romance and figured out how to combine different rhythms in one work. The composer's performances were attended by the imperial family, and his talent was highly appreciated by his contemporaries Vasily Zhukovsky and Alexander Pushkin. Critic Vladimir Stasov wrote: "In many respects Glinka has in Russian music the same importance as Pushkin in Russian poetry. Both are great talents , both have created a new Russian language - one in poetry, the other in music".Young Glinka was brought up according to the method of the time. He had a French governess who taught him to read and write. An architect hired at the estate taught him to draw. Glinka early became interested in geography, beginning to travel through books and maps, and they determined his further interest in wanderings.
A great influence on the future composer was his nanny Avdotya Ivanovna. She sang Russian songs and told fascinating fairy tales to the boy with special pleasure, having managed to instill in him a love for his native folklore. Glinka always remembered her warmly, and undoubtedly much of what he heard from his nanny as a child was deeply ingrained in his soul.
Novospasskoye and the surrounding villages were famous for the art of song. "Perhaps these songs I heard in my childhood - years later Glinka recalled in his "Notes" - were the first reason that later I began to develop mainly folk Russian music."
Another vivid musical impression of early childhood was the chiming of the bells of the family church of Glinka. Little Glinka not only listened to the bells with rapt attention, but also tried to reproduce them at home with the help of copper basins. It is very possible that this passion, born in childhood, helped later to find a brilliant use of bell ringing in the finale of the opera "Ivan Susanin". His passion for music broke through irresistibly at the age of 10-11 after one of the concerts of his uncle Afanasy Andreyevich's orchestra. The quartet with clarinet by B. Kruzel plunged the boy into an "inexplicable, languidly sweet state", making "an unfathomable, new and delightful impression". Excitement so engulfed young Glinka that he was then a few days inattentive to everything else, absent-minded and to a perplexed question from the drawing teacher answered with a phrase that went down in history as a winged phrase. "What is there to do? - he said. - Music is my soul." Since that time, the passion for music has never left Glinka.