Beginning in 1871 Minkus served in the official post of Composer of Ballet Music to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, a position he held until it was abolished upon his retirement in 1886.

During his long career in St. Petersburg, Minkus composed for the original works and revivals staged by the ballet masters Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa.

The most well-known of Minkus's additional music is the Grand Pas classique and Mazurka des enfants composed for Petipa's 1881 revival of Paquita.

[1] During his association with the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Minkus composed another score for ballet, the one-act Deux jours en Venise (Two Days in Venice), produced in 1862.

[1] In 1862 Minkus was commissioned to compose an entr'acte for solo violin to be added to Adolphe Adam's score for Jean Coralli's ballet Orfa, which was staged for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow by Arthur Saint-Léon.

Minkus's score was praised by Parisian critics, among them Théophile Gautier, who found the music to be filled with a " .. haunting, dreamy quality.

[3] Saint-Léon also mounted the work for the ballet troupe of the Teatro Comunale in Trieste, where it premiered on 15 March 1868 as Nascita della Fiamma d′Amore (Birth of the Flame of Love).

20 November] 1866 Saint-Léon presented his one-act ballet Le Poisson doré (The Golden Fish), which was staged at Peterhof in honor of the wedding of the Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich to the Princess Dagmar of Denmark.

Saint-Léon chose a Russian subject for this work, derived from Alexander Pushkin's 1835 poem Skazka o rybake i rybke (The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish).

Minkus's score featured several traditional Russian folk melodies, as well as virtuoso passages for solo flute written especially for the renowned Italian flautist Cesare Ciardi.

The following season Minkus and Saint-Léon produced the ballet Le Lys (The Lily), based on a Chinese legend Three Arrows.

Pugni had served as Ballet Composer of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres since 1850, a post which was created especially for him when he accompanied Perrot to Russia that same year.

For the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre's 1869–1870 season, Petipa staged a Grand ballet based on Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel Don Quixote.

Petipa staged a new version of his Don Quixote for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, and for this production Minkus completely reworked and expanded his score.

They would go on to produce La Camargo in 1872, Le Papillon in 1874, Les Brigands (The Bandits) in 1875, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Les Aventures de Pélée (The Adventures of Peleus) in 1876, and finally La Bayadère in 1877, which would go on to be the most enduring and well preserved work for which Minkus composed the music.

In 1883 Minkus composed the music for Petipa's Nuit et Jour, a sumptuous pièce d'occasion staged especially for the celebrations held at the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in honor of the coronation of Emperor Alexander III.

The third and final tableau was known as The Kingdom of the Laces in which a Grand divertissement of national dances from Belgium, England, Spain and Russia was performed.

Minkus's next score was for Petipa's one-act ballet L'Offrandes à l'Amour, staged especially for the benefit performance of the ballerina Eugenia Sokolova on 3 August [O.S.

In light of this, the director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky felt that the time had come for Minkus's post of official ballet composer to be abolished in an effort to diversify the music supplied for new works.

9 November] 1886 with his benefit performance that featured excerpts from Les pilules magiques and the Grand pas classique from Paquita.

Though not a success, the ballet was acquired by the young Mathilde Kschessinskaya upon the departure of Carlotta Brianza in late 1891, who used it to launch her own career.

For a time he lived in the Karl Ludwig Strasse on the third floor of a rented apartment belonging to his friend, the revered pianist and teacher Theodor Leschetizky.

The ballet was rejected outright by the Operntheater's directorate Gustav Mahler, who felt that the work's libretto was out of touch with contemporary tastes.

Minkus later relocated to an apartment in the Gentzgasse where he spent his final years alone and in utter poverty, his wife having died in 1895, and the events of World War I having cut off his pension from Russia.

In 1939 Minkus's grave fell victim to the national fascist policies of the time when all cemeteries were systematically "cleansed" by the invading Nazi regime.