In the light of the newly raised interest in Sergei Eisensteins film 2Ivan the Terrible, Part II3 in 1958, Abram Stassevich, the conductor of the film score that had been composed by Sergei Prokofiev in close collaboration with the director, proposed to the young and highly acclaimed choreographer Yuri Grigorovich to make the material and music into a self-contained ballet. But it took until the 1970s until the idea of this ambitious project was put into action. Grigorovich then asked the director of the Bolshoi Theatre, the composer and professor of composition Mikhail I. Tchulaki, to compose a ballet score for the new production on the basis of the Eisenstein{u2019}s musical film material. The score of Ivan the Terrible is a collage of no less than 377 fragments of the original film score, but also of other works by Prokofiev. Grigorovichs Ivan is different form the historical figure and even from Eisenstein{u2019}s interpretation. It is a predominantly fictious, poetically symbolic creation of the choreographer who tried to reveal the inner world of his time and his contemporaries. This programme is an absolute rarity and a real treasure for all ballet lovers.