WHEN:
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 7:30 PM
WHERE:
The Town Hall
123 West 43rd Street
New York, NY
TICKETS:
For more information and tickets visit the Rachmaninoff and the Tsar website.
A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Known throughout the world for his solo composer plays, in Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, Felder appears for the first time opposite another actor. Felder plays the role of Russian composer and virtuoso pianist Sergei V. Rachmaninoff, while British-Italian actor Jonathan Silvestri (HBO’s “Borgia,” “Dakota,” “The Young Pope”) takes on the role of Tsar Nicholas II.
Having safely left Russia during the 1917 revolution, 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…
...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.
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..."
CAST:
Hershey Felder as Sergei Rachmaninoff
Jonathan Silvestri as Tsar Nicholas II
CREATIVE TEAM:
Book – Hershey Felder
Dramaturgy – Jerry Patch
Director – Trevor Hay
Lighting - Erik. S. Barry
Scenic – Hershey Felder
Sound and Production – Erik Carstensen
Projections – Stefano Decarli
Costumes – Marysol Gabriel
Wigs and makeup – Judi Lewin
