Tickets for performances at Moscow’s Bolshoi theater will have purchasers’ passport numbers printed on them, theater head Anatoly Iksanov said at a news conference on Thursday.
He said this would apply to tickets bought via the Internet and at the Bolshoi box office.
There has been a surge in ticket sales since the theater reopened two weeks ago after a six-year renovation.
Although tickets for this month are sold out, touts and agencies have been selling them for vastly inflated prices. A 3,000 ruble ($100) ticket goes for as much as 40,000 rubles.
Iksanov also said that Bolshoi borrowed the idea of selling tickets with passport numbers on them from La Scala Theater in Milan, but he noted that the Italian theater has gone even further and that there tickets were only on sale on the day of the show.