Jānis Mediņš

Who was Jānis Mediņš?

Jānis Mediņš was a Latvian composer. He was born in Riga. He was an vital force in musical life during the short-lived first independent Latvian republic. He almost singlehandly established in his country both the balletic genre – with Mīlas uzvara – and the operatic with Uguns un nakts and Dievi un cilvēki. Both the latter works deal with struggle against despotism, and it was as a result of multiple invasions of his country that Mediņš left Latvia 1944, eventually settling for good in Sweden.