<…> Among my works for the Russian opera, in addition to those for Prince Igor, were sketches for Sadko, Tsar Saltan (Covent Garden) and the Maid of Pskov (Diaghilev), as well as three productions of The Snow Maiden, the first at the Opéra Comique in Paris, the second in Petersburg and the third in Chicago in 1922.

In 1913 I designed Peer Gynt for the Moscow Art Theatre on the invitation of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. At the same time a design for Maeterlinck’s four-act Princess Maleine was begun for the Moscow Free Theatre, but it remained unfinished due to the theatre’s bankruptcy. That same year there was The Rite of Spring in Paris with Diaghilev and Nijinsky, and later another design for Stokowski and Massine’s production of that work in New York in 1930. In 1921 there was Tristan and Isolde in Chicago. And I shouldn’t forget Fuenteovejuna for Baron Drizen’s Starinny Theatre in Petersburg. The original of that sketch was in the Golike collection and was published in colour (in somewhat faded tones) in the monograph of 1916.

In 1915, with the war already underway, I designed Sister Beatrice for the Musical Drama Theatre, for which Steinberg wrote a musical introduction dedicated to me. Also among my theatrical works was the painted curtain the Battle of Kerzhenets commissioned by Diaghilev. <…>

N. Roerich. “The Theatre”. 1937