Jurgis Karnavičius (composer)

After completing his basic education in his homeland, he began the study of Law in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1927, Karnavičius returned to Lithuania, which had only regained its independence as a sovereign nation less than ten years earlier.

In addition to teaching at the Conservatory of Music in Kaunas, he opted to play the viola with the orchestra of the State Opera for a number of years.

[1] It had incorporated more than forty melodies borrowed from Lithuanian folk songs, and was a popular success.

This was followed in 1937 by the opera Radvila Perkūnas about the Lithuanian nobleman Krzysztof Mikołaj Radziwiłł.