Hershey Felder Will Bring RACHMANINOFF AND THE TSAR to South Coast Repertory
Performances run Feb. 19-March 2.
By: Stephi Wild Feb. 05, 2025
South Coast Repertory and HFP LIVE will present pianist/actor/playwright/producer Hershey Felder, for a strictly limited engagement of Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, a new musical play, at South Coast Repertory, Feb. 19-March 2 on the Segerstrom Stage. Known throughout the world for his solo composer plays, for the first time, Felder appears opposite another actor, British-Italian Jonathan Silvestri, in the role of Tsar Nicholas II.
Having safely left Russia during the 1917 revolution, legendary pianist-composer Sergei Rachmaninoff made his home in the United States. In 1942, at the age of 68, he applied for American citizenship and bought a home in Beverly Hills, but his soul never left Russia. Six months thereafter, a terminal illness brought forth the memory of an encounter with Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Tsar’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia. This memory would haunt him until the end. Featuring Rachmaninoff’s most beautiful music including the Second Piano Concerto, the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Preludes, Symphonic Selections and more, Rachmaninoff and the Tsar had its world premiere this past summer at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica, followed by the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, where the San Diego Union Tribune said that “Felder gives a heartbreaking performance in his masterful drama about Rachmaninoff in what is his best work.”
Along with Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, SCR is presenting a special, one-night only performance of the Hershey Felder’s Great American Songbook Sing-Along on the Segerstrom Stage on Monday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m. On this interactive experience, Felder invites audiences to sing along as he takes them through 100 years of some of the most iconic American music, incorporating works by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and George and Ira Gershwin, among others. Felder not only plays songs familiar to all ages, but tells stories about each one.
“It’s a thrill to have Hershey back at SCR entertaining Orange County audiences,” Ivers said. “It’s particularly exciting to be presenting his brand-new work with our audiences as he shares the stage and the spotlight in this entertaining and timely narrative, shaped in part with SCR’s own resident dramaturg, Jerry Patch. Oh, and he’s added a special Hershey Sing-Along that is not to be missed.”
Since the 1998 premiere of his internationally lauded play with music George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder has appeared on world renowned stages throughout the United States and abroad, giving more than 6,000 performances on stages in original works that include George Gershwin Alone, Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, as well at the appearances of Our Great Tchaikovsky, A Paris Love Story—Debussy, and more. Film world premieres at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills include several of his award-winning films: Musical Tales in the Venetian Jewish Ghetto, The Assembly, Noble Genius Chopin & Liszt, and more. In all, Hershey Felder has performed on more than 100 stages in leading worldwide theatres.
This exploration of Rachmaninoff’s itinerant but extraordinary life illuminates the master’s sense of home and family and how those elements influenced his art. It features his world-famous C# minor Prelude to his Second Piano Concerto, his symphonies and his Paganini Variations. Rachmaninoff did leave Russia but Russia stayed with him until the very end, influencing every aspect of his life. This world premiere promises to be another mystical musical journey in the Hershey Felder style that audiences have come to know and love.
“Hershey is unparalleled at combining great classical piano and theatrical performance. Our Orange County audience is in for a real treat as we explore this story of Rachmaninoff’s escape from Russia and choice to live in exile in California,” Appel said. “Hershey reminds us that making a home in California allows all of us to experience the richness of the many artists who have made our state their home, and that the theatre provides a unique kind of refuge and gathering place for the exchange of cultures.”
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar features the music of Sergei V. Rachmaninoff with a book by Hershey Felder. The production is directed by Trevor Hay. Dramaturgy by Jerry Patch, South Coast Repertory’s Resident Dramaturg. Concept design is by Hershey Felder. Lighting is by Erik S. Barry, sound and production management is by Erik Carstensen, Projections are by Stefano Decarli, Costumes are by Marysol M. Gabriel and wigs are by Judi Lewin.
Sergei Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 in the Russian village of Semyonovo, more than one thousand miles to the east of Moscow. Beginning piano lessons at four, when he was ten he entered the St. Petersburg conservatory later moving to the Moscow Conservatory. He was known as a first-rate pianist, a world class conductor and heir to Tchaikovsky as composer. He spent most of his life performing as a pianist in Europe and the US. While he was world renowned as a pianist and conductor and beloved for his compositions, he was not critically well received by cognoscenti until the second half of the 20th century. He died just days before his 70th birthday in Beverly Hills, only weeks after finally receiving his American citizenship.
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