The idea of recreating medieval liturgical dramas and mystery plays as they were actually staged in the Middle Ages was the brainchild of the Russian dramatist Nikolai Nikolayevich Evreinov and the theater historian Baron von Drizen. Together they organized the Starinny (Old) Theater and attracted actors, composers, artists, poets, dancers, and scholars, including Roerich, who was asked to design the sets and costumes for “The Three Magi”.

Roerich’s sets for “The Three Magi” marked his debut as a stage designer, that aspect of his long and varied career for which he is perhaps best known in the West.

Then came Wagner’s Die Walkűre.

Years later Roerich described his method of discovering correspondences between the music of an opera or ballet and the color scheme of the décor.

            … I never paint the scenery for an opera or a ballet without first having an intimate acquaintance with both the drama and the music. I study both deeply, in order to get at the spirit that lies behind both, which spirit must be one and the same if the work is to be great and lasting. Having steeped myself in the central idea, the inspiration that gave birth to the work, and permitted it to take possession of me, I then endeavor to express the same thought, the same inspiration in my painting, that, the composer and the librettist have expressed in music and in words.

Other operas, ballets and theatre performances which Roerich created sets and designs for: “Boris Godunov” (1909), “Le Sacre Du Printemps” (1910), “Peer Gynt” (1912),    “Prince Igor” (1914), “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1919), “The Snow Maiden” (1921),  etc.

Snegurochka and Lel, Rimsky-Korsakov's Opera "The Snow Maiden"

Solveig's Song (Hut in the forest) for Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt”

The Great Sacrifice. Setting for I.F.Stravinsky’s Ballet "Sacred Spring"

Russian Hut from the "Tale of Tsar Saltan"