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Police officials detained the three men on Tuesday.

Investigators said that they believed that the dancer, Pavel Dmitrichenko, hired two men to accost Mr. Filin outside his apartment building late on Jan. 17. As Mr. Filin punched in an entry code, the police said, a masked man called his name and tossed the contents of a jar of sulfuric acid at his eyes.

At around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, a police spokesman told the Interfax news agency that all three men — Mr. Dmitrichenko and the men he hired to throw the acid and drive a getaway car — had signed confessions.

The crime set off weeks of soul-searching in this ballet-mad city, especially because Mr. Filin said he was sure he had been attacked over a professional grudge. Detectives worked their way through the ranks of the Bolshoi, becoming so entranced by the world of the ballet that they began asking Mr. Filin for tickets, he said in a recent interview.

Mr. Dmitrichenko had not been mentioned publicly as a potential suspect. A theatrical, athletic dancer, he is a fierce advocate of classicism in the Bolshoi's repertory. He is also romantically linked with a ballerina in the company, Anzhelina Vorontsova, whose supporters blame Mr. Filin for stalling her career. Neither Mr. Dmitrichenko nor anyone representing him commented on Tuesday.

The company's spokeswoman, Katerina Novikova, said the day's revelations had given her hope that the theater could leave a dark chapter behind.

"It's important for the future," she said, "so that nobody acts like this, because they will know that they're going to be punished. It's important for the theater, and it's important for the whole country."

Investigators had been combing through the records of cellphone calls placed from areas around the scene of the attack. Before dawn on Tuesday morning, police officers carried out a raid in Stupino, a neighborhood outside Moscow that is also the site of summer cottages used by Bolshoi Theater personnel.

There they detained Andrei Lipatov, who the police believed drove the attacker to the scene, an investigator told Interfax. Within a few hours investigators had asked Mr. Dmitrichenko to lead them to a Moscow apartment registered in Mr. Dmitrichenko's name. A witness said they arrived together, and left empty-handed after about 30 minutes.

At nightfall, the police announced two more detentions — those of Yuri Zarutsky, suspected of throwing the acid, and of Mr. Dmitrichenko. All three men will be held for two days pending a formal arraignment, most likely on charges of inflicting grave bodily harm, which can bring a prison sentence of two to eight years.

The accusation against Mr. Dmitrichenko is certain to resonate in Moscow.

Born into a family of prominent dancers, he told one interviewer that his mother tricked him into taking an entrance exam for ballet school by promising him a Mars bar. He was singled out by the Bolshoi's longtime director Yuri Grigorovich, who led the company for three decades, and remained passionately loyal to him years after Mr. Grigorovich's dismissal in 1995.

Ms. Novikova said she was not aware of any "sharp conflict" between Mr. Dmitrichenko and Mr. Filin, who cast him in the lead role in the ballet "Ivan the Terrible" last fall.

"In addition, I want to say that it doesn't matter how sharp the conflict may be between people — it doesn't mean anything," she said. "I think investigators should work and find proof."

Mr. Dmitrichenko, who held the rank of lead soloist, had expressed grievances toward the company, complaining to Private Correspondent magazine that dancers' salaries were so low that "migrant workers would not agree to work on a construction site for this money."

The principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze — who has himself come under scrutiny because of his feud with Bolshoi management — said Mr. Dmitrichenko served on the Bolshoi's commission on grants paid to dancers and often complained about Mr. Filin's decisions.

"They clashed openly about money," Mr. Tsiskaridze said on Tuesday in an interview. "Everyone knew it."

After news of Mr. Dmitrichenko's detention was made public, Mr. Tsiskaridze said he was distressed because of the pain it would bring Ms. Vorontsova, who is his student and protégée. He said he had not spoken to Ms. Vorontsova about it because she was onstage dancing in the Balanchine ballet "Jewels."

"I am really sorry for everyone," said Mr. Tsiskaridze, who described Mr. Dmitrichenko as "an explosive person — he might throw a punch, for instance."

"But I don't think he is capable of this," he added.

Mr. Dmitrichenko has also been known to lash out when offended. After a prominent ballet critic displeased him with an essay on Mr. Grigorovich, he posted a tirade on the Web site of her newspaper, saying she was taking revenge for her own unsuccessful dancing career.

"All informed fans, viewers and especially artists laugh at your writings, because they display nothing but malice toward Grigorovich," he wrote in the newspaper's comments section. "Grigorovich is a recognized genius in the whole world, and when you write poorly about him, you simply disgrace the newspaper that publishes your words."

Mr. Filin, 42, who is receiving treatment at a clinic in Germany, made no comment on Tuesday. In an earlier interview, however, he said he believed a group of people had planned attacks on him in hopes of wresting control of the theater's top administrative jobs. He suffered burns to his face and his eyes in the attack and has undergone a series of operations in hopes of preserving as much of his eyesight as possible.

He accepted the post of artistic director in 2011 just as Gennady Yanin, who occupied the more managerial position of director, filed for voluntary leave, after sexually explicit photographs of a man resembling him were sent to e-mail addresses in Russia and elsewhere.

"I felt that I became a continuation, the next participant in the story," Mr. Filin said. "As one might say, 'You'll be next.' "