Serov, Aleksandr Nikolaievich (1820–1871)

Russian composer and critic. He greatly admired Wagner, and disliked the Russian nationalist composers. Among his own compositions, the operas Judith (1863) and Rogneda (1865) were highly successful, and had a pronounced effect on later composers.

He studied law, but found time to cultivate music, which eventually, after a career as a civil servant, he took up professionally. He studied cello and theory from around 1840 and began an opera on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor in 1843, but was reduced to taking a correspondence course of musical instruction when transferred to Simferopol. He became a music critic and in 1858, when he returned from a visit to Germany as an ardent admirer of Wagner, he began to attack the Russian nationalist school of composers, but found a powerful opponent in Vladimir Stasov. He was over 40 when he began his first opera. When he died from heart disease, he had just begun a fourth opera, based on Gogol's Christmas Eve Revels.

He married the composer Valentina Semionovna Bergman (1846–1927), who wrote some operas of her own, including Uriel Acosta (based on Gutzkow's play).

Works Opera and stage Judith (1863), Rogneda (1865), The Power of Evil (after Ostrovsky's play; orchestration finished by Soloviev, 1871); incidental music to Nikolai Pavlovich Zhandr's tragedy Nero.

Church and secular music Stabat Mater and Ave Maria; Gopak, Dance of the Zaporogue Cossacks, and other orchestral works.