Alexander Lazarev

Liza’s life seems completely hopeless. From morning till night, she sells fish at a wholesale market, endures her boss’s rudeness, and returns home to a nagging stepmother and a constantly drunk father. Every day, walking past the city’s central streets, she gazes longingly at the shop windows behind which lies another, fairy-tale world — a world of happy people. Just when Liza is ready to give up hope of changing her life, fate suddenly smiles on her: she gets a job at an elite flower salon. But on her very first day, she is fired — she has neither the upbringing nor the manners expected there. Even dressed in an expensive uniform, she still seems like a market vendor. Determined to change her fate, Liza decides to become a true lady and win her place back. Fortunately for her, Professor Levitin — a philologist, aristocrat, and refined gentleman — is looking for a student…

Glinka's "patriotic-heroic tragic opera" in four acts 'A Life for the Tsar' or 'Ivan Susanin' (as it was known during the Soviet era), recorded live at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1992, and starring Evgeny Nesterenko, Marina Mescheriakova, Alexander Lomonosov and Elena Zaremba, with the chorus and orchestra of the Bolshoi, conducted by Alexander Lazarev. The historical basis of the plot involves Ivan Susanin, a patriotic hero of the early 17th century who died in the expulsion of the invading Polish army for the newly elected Tsar Michael of Russia, the first of the Romanov dynasty, elected in 1613.

The Maid of Orleans is an opera in 4 acts, 6 scenes, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed during 1878–1879 to a Russian libretto by the composer, based on several sources: Friedrich Schiller's The Maid of Orleans.