Shostakovich's three ballets – The Golden Age, Op. 22 (1929–30), The Bolt, Op. 27 (1931) and The Limpid Stream, Op. 39 (1935) – remain today, sixty years after their first appearance and twenty years after the death of the composer, among the least known works in his musical legacy.

These huge ballet scores flowed from the pen of the young genius at the time of his rapid and dazzling rise to fame. It is sufficient to recall that they appeared at the same time as The Nose and The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, the First Piano Concerto and the Twenty-Four Preludes, the Cello Sonata, the early film scores (New Babylon, Alone, Golden Hills and The Passer-By (sometimes known as Counterplan)) and numerous works for the theatre. Just a single year separates The Limpid Stream from the Fourth Symphony and two years from the Fifth. This alone should be sufficient to arouse our interest in the ballets.

I shall examine here the history of the première of the first of them – The Golden Age, In doing so, the main and almost the only object of attention will be the première itself and the subsequent fate of the performance in the 1930–1 season. Not that other issues surrounding The Golden Age are unimportant. But the success or failure of a première plays no small part in the fate of a work and in the life of the composer.