This powerful historical opera continues the saga of the descent of the first Russian Tsars, picking up the action exactly where Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov ends. Listeners should not expect to hear any musical reference to Mussorgsky in this opera; Dmitrij is in Dvorák's own style.

Russian Tsardom began when Duke Ivan IV of Moscow proclaimed himself "tsar and autocrat" of all the Russias, and came to be known in English as Ivan the Terrible. After his death, Boris Godunov seized power in the absence of an heir to Ivan, though rumors were spread that Ivan's son, Dmitri had been murdered by Godunov or had escaped to Poland. At the end of Mussorgsky's opera a man claiming to be Dmitri, but in reality a puppet of the Poles, arrives in Moscow to take the throne as Boris dies.

In Dvorák's opera, Dmitrij (Czech spelling) sincerely believes he is Ivan's son and rightful heir, and is an idealist. The burden of the plot is the Poles' efforts to oppress the Russians using Dmitrij as their tool, and Dmitrij's reactions as he learns the true situation.

Just as with Mussorgsky's opera, producers have to choose among several editions of Dmitrij. Seeking international recognition as an opera composer, Dvorák accepted the libretto by Marie Cervinkova-Riegrova and began work in 1881. Dvorák completed the opera in August 1882. Dmitrij is a large-scale work in the Meyerbeer tradition. It was successfully produced in Prague on October 8, 1882. At the advice of influential Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, Dvorák replaced the gruesome murder of Boris's daughter Xenia with her banishment to a monastery. With other minor changes and a new Act II overture, the opera received another Prague performance, but its planned Munich debut was canceled and Dvorák published a piano score of the opera in 1886. In 1892, a production in Vienna failed, prompting Dvorák to rewrite the opera totally in 1894, using the original musical material. But eventually he came to prefer most of the original version, with a few sections replaced by the 1894 material. After his death, the intendant of the Prague National Opera, Karel Kovarovic (a frustrated composer himself), made drastic changes that became the only available published version of the full score. Finally in the 1980s Milan Pospisil edited a critical edition restoring most of Dvorák's expressed intentions.

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