RACHMANINOFF AND THE TSAR Comes to the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in August

HFP LIVE will present the world premiere of pianist/actor/playwright/producer Hershey Felder and Jonathan Silvestri in Rachmaninoff And The Tsar, a new musical play, for a strictly limited engagement, at The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA, August 7-25, 2024. While Felder has performed in concert on the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica, this production will mark his first full theatrical play in one of Los Angeles’ most acoustically magnificent and intimate theatres.
 
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 received 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 Paganini Variations, Preludes, and Symphonic Selections, Rachmaninoff And The Tsar, will have Felder in the role of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and for the first time, Felder will play opposite another artist, British-Italian Jonathan Silvestri (HBO hit series “Borgia”) in the role of Tsar Nicholas II.
 
Tickets and information are available now at: RachAndTheTsar.com or by calling the box office, open daily from 12-5 pm at (213) 544-0477. Box office telephone hours on show days are 12-8 pm.
 
Since the 1998 premiere of his internationally lauded play with music George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder has appeared on over one thousand performances on Los Angeles area stages that include The Wallis in Beverly Hills, Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, Pasadena Playhouse and The Tiffany Theatre on Sunset, where his music-composer series was born. World premieres in Los Angeles include George Gershwin Alone, Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, as well as 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.
 
This exploration of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s itinerant but extraordinary life illuminates the master’s sense of home and family and how those elements influenced his art. Featuring 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.
 
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.  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 Gabriel and  hair is by Tom Watson.

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