Ivan The Terrible

Sergei Eisensteins grand unfinished 1940s50s film trilogy Ivan the Terrible had elaborate incidental music by Sergei Prokofiev In 1975 Yuri Grigorovich for thirty years the chief choreographer of Moscows Bolshoi Ballet made a ballet on the same subject and used a conflation of Prokofievs music from the film It was quickly taken up by ballet companies the world over This DVD is a film of a performance recorded live at the Opéra National de Paris in December 2003 and featuring three premier dancers of that company in the solo roles of Ivan Anastasia and Kurbsky The stage is filled at times with as many as eighty dancers as boyars oprichniks Ivans personal police assassins actually maidens from whom Ivan picks his bride and the Russian people