Alexander Serov

He is notable as one of the most important music critics in Russia during the 1850s and 1860s and as the most significant Russian composer in the period between Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka and the works of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky.

[1] Serov's maternal grandfather, Carl Ludwig Hablitz,[2][3] was a naturalist of German-Jewish origin who was born in Königsberg and moved to Russia in childhood when his father was hired to be inspector of Moscow University's printing department.

[1] Serov was more interested in music, however, and became a friend of another law school student, Vladimir Stasov,[1][2][4] who eventually became a famous art critic.

[5] Serov completed his studies in 1840 and started working as a lawyer in the government bureaucracy in St. Petersburg as well as in Pskov and in Simferopol, capital of Crimea.

A CD recording of Judith (with some cuts) was made in 1991 by the orchestra and choir of the Bolshoi Theatre under conductor Andrey Chistiakov.