Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Иван Грозный) is music by Sergei Prokofiev originally composed for the Sergei Eisenstein film about the sixteenth-century ruler. Prokofiev composed music to Part 1 in 1942-44, and to Part 2 in 1945; the score is cataloged as Op. 116. After the composer’s death, music for the film was arranged first into an oratorio (with speaker, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) by Alexander Stasevich (1961), who was the conductor of the film score, and later into a concert scenario by Christopher Palmer (1990). Yet in 1973 the composer Mikhail Chulaki and the choreographer Yuri Grigorovich drew on Prokofiev’s film score to create his ballet entitled Ivan the Terrible, which was given its premiere in 1975.
This is one of the two works born from Prokofiev's collaboration with Eisenstein, the other being Alexander Nevsky.
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