The Tsar’s Bride

Presented by Dubai Opera in collaboration with Art Seasons.

The Bolshoi Theatre’s first official tour in the UAE.

The Tsar’s Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is a story of great passion, dramatic tension, and bloody revenge, inspired by historical events from the reign of Ivan the Terrible. It is one of the iconic productions of the Bolshoi Theatre’s golden repertoire.

Lev Mey, the Russian dramatist and poet whose work inspired Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, based The Tsar’s Bride on the true story of Marfa Sobakina, the third wife of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who died just two weeks after their wedding. The opera, however, makes no claim to historical accuracy. Mey, and later Rimsky-Korsakov, created vivid characters caught in intensely dramatic circumstances, with their actions driven by the internal logic of the unfolding plot.

This production was the final work of the outstanding set designer Fyodor Fedorovsky. His monumental period sets became a classic example of the Bolshoi’s celebrated “grand style” and were recreated in 2014 under the supervision of Alyona Pikalova for the Bolshoi Theatre’s current production.