Hershey Felder to Present RACHMANINOFF AND THE TSAR at TheatreWorks

Pianist/actor/playwright/producer Hershey Felder will return to TheatreWorks Silicon Valley as Sergei Rachmaninoff in the Northern California Premiere of Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, the final work in his internationally-acclaimed series of composer plays. For the first time, Felder appears opposite another actor: British-Italian Jonathan Silvestri in the role of Tsar Nicholas II. Featuring Rachmaninoff’s most beloved compositions, Rachmaninoff and the Tsar promises to be another mystical musical journey in the Hershey Felder style. TheatreWorks audiences have flocked to Felder’s past record-breaking hit productions which brought to life composers including George Gershwin, Frédéric Chopin, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Irving Berlin, Claude Debussy, Ludwig van Beethoven, and more.

Rachmaninoff and the Tsar will be presented January 10 – February 9, 2025 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.
 
The play brings to life legendary pianist-composer Sergei Rachmaninoff who, having safely left Russia during the 1917 revolution, has 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 has never left Russia. Facing a terminal illness brings forth the memory of an encounter with Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Tsar’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, a memory that haunts Rachmaninoff until the end.
 
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar had its World Premiere at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica followed by a hit run at the Balboa Theatre in Santa Monica. San Diego Union-Tribune called the performance “masterful, visually stunning” noting the show is “one of his best.” HoustonPress commended Felder’s “charm, finesse, and astonishing piano prowess,” while Stage and Cinema lauded his “fantastic playing of some of the greatest compositions of all time.”
                                                                                                          
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 six thousand performances in original works that include George Gershwin Alone, Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, Our Great Tchaikovsky, Hershey Felder as Claude Debussy in A Paris Love Story, and more. World premieres at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills have included 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 one hundred stages in leading worldwide theatres.
 
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, 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.
 
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, he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at the age of ten, 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 U.S. 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, a few weeks after finally receiving his American citizenship.
 
Rachmaninoff and the Tsar features direction by Trevor Hay, dramaturgy by Jerry Patch, concept design by Hershey Felder, lighting design by Erik S. Barry, sound design and production management by Erik Carstensen, sound operation by Jeremy Kalke, projections design by Stefano Decarli, costumes design by Marysol Gabriel and wig design by Judi Lewin.

Photo Credit: Stefano DeCarli

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