Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mikhail Glinka was a Russian composer born in 1804 in the village of Novospasskoye in the Smolensk Governorate. He was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within Russia itself and is regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. His work directly influenced The Five, the group of composers who developed a distinctly Russian classical style.
Glinka's first major opera was A Life for the Tsar, originally titled Ivan Susanin. It premiered on the 9th of December 1836 under the direction of Catterino Cavos. Tsar Nicholas I rewarded Glinka for the work with a ring valued at 4,000 rubles.
Kamarinskaya is a symphonic poem Glinka composed in 1848, based on Russian folk songs. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky described it as the acorn from which the oak of later Russian symphonic music grew, identifying it as a foundational work for the Russian orchestral tradition.
Glinka wrote a piece called "Patrioticheskaya Pesnya," supposedly for a national anthem contest in 1833. In 1990 the Supreme Soviet of Russia adopted it as the regional anthem of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It was officially confirmed as the Russian national anthem in 1993 and remained so until 2000, when it was replaced by the Soviet anthem with new lyrics.
The overture to Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is used as the theme of the long-running U.S. television comedy series Mom. The show's creators chose it because they felt the fast-paced, complex orchestral music reflected the characters' struggles to overcome destructive habits and keep pace with daily life.
Glinka died suddenly on the 15th of February 1857 in Berlin, following a cold. He was initially buried there, but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and reinterred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.