The performance will begin at 19:00 local time. In Belgrade, “The Tsar’s Bride” was first performed in 1925, and it has not been staged before in Novi Sad.
The opera tells the story of Marfa Sobakina, whom Ivan the Terrible chooses as his bride, although she is already engaged to another man. Novikov said that what makes this opera a classic is the story of sincere love and of a person destroyed by “the vicious world of intrigue, conspiracies, and baseness”.
In October, he told local media that after ten days of work in Novi Sad, he had formed a positive impression of the artists of the Serbian National Theatre, their dedication to the cause, and their ability to overcome language and other obstacles. In November 2025, Sergey Novikov received the national opera award “Onegin” in the new category “Director”.
A few months earlier, he staged Sergei Prokofiev’s opera “Semyon Kotko” at the Bolshoi Theatre about events in Ukraine after the First World War. At the end of the production, the audience was invited to draw a parallel with 2022, when, according to the creators of the performance, Russia “came to the aid of the residents of Donbas”.
Novi Sad is also linked to the political crisis in Serbia: on November 1, 2024, a concrete canopy at the railway station collapsed there, killing 16 people. After the tragedy, mass protests led by students began across the country, and in May 2025 they called for early parliamentary elections.
The vote took place on October 25, 2026, and the “Student List” won, taking 140 of the 250 seats. Against this backdrop, the premiere of “The Tsar’s Bride” is taking place in a city that has remained one of the centers of public tension for more than a year.
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