Cheat Sheet: The Love For Three Oranges | Opera Australia The Love for Three Oranges cheat sheet: The Love for Three Oranges Everything you need to know about Prokofiev's surreal, screwball fairytale for adults. Please, just sum it up for me! Who was the composer? Sergei Prokofiev is one of the major composers of the 20th century: a Russian who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory before making his name as a composer and pianist. He is most famous for his ballet, Romeo and Juliet and his work for orchestra and narrator, Peter and the Wolf. Like other great 20th-century composers, he played with harmony but his work isn’t dissonant or 'difficult' — it’s melodic, approachable and in this opera, lots of fun! Prokofiev died aged 61 after a long illness, on the same day as Joseph Stalin. Sergei Prokofiev photographed circa 1918. What happens in the story? The Prince is melancholy, tragic poetry to blame. Prescription? Laughter!

While the court scrambles to amuse the prince, it's a witch that finally does the trick; tripping over and revealing her knickers. His laugh angers the witch, who curses the Prince with an obsessive love for three oranges. The Prince and his jester march off to find the oranges, kept in the kitchen of a murderous cook. But not everyone is on the prince's side; the Prime Minister is plotting to kill him! Does true love lie under that thick orange skin? Will the witch come back for revenge? Will the evil Prime Minister succeed? In this farcical fairytale, you never know what's around the corner. Who are the main players? The King of Clubs: ruler of an imaginary Kingdom The Prince: the King's son, struck down with melancholy Princess Clarissa: the King's niece, next in line for the throne Leandro: the Prime Minister Pantaloon: friend and advisor of the King Tchelio: a magician, protector of the King Fata Morgana: a witch, protector of Leandro What's the big hit? Something to listen out for Prokofiev’s music is energetic, clever and very accessible.

Listen to how rhythm drives the action (the most famous example is that famous march. The characters are literally marching, but the music is also signaling the story moving inexorably on!) A journalist perhaps best described the music of the opera, as he reviewed the dress rehearsal in 1921: "Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium. Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New Year's Eve horns, harmonicas and old-fashioned musical beer steins that play when you lift them up... it sounds like the picture of a crazy Christmas tree drawn by a happy child," wrote Ben Hecht for the Chicago Daily News. He observes two critics disparaging the music and concludes "perhaps ... music critics will fail to understand it and untutored [people] like ourselves will find in the hurdy-gurdy rhythms and contortions of Mr Prokofieff ... a strange delight. As if some one had given us a musical lollypop to suck and rub in our hair..." This production is ... Bold, colourful fun, from the brilliant mind of director Francesca Zambello .

George Tsypin 's kooky sets explore the fantasy world of this satirical fairytale, and Tania Noginova's costumes are larger than life. Costume sketches for the Chorus, Princess Ninetta and The King of Clubs by Tania Noginova. A little history Prokofiev was making waves in America with his music when the Chicago Opera enquired if he might write them an opera. The composer accepted a commission to produce an opera based on The Love for Three Oranges — a satirical, fairytale play by Carlo Gozzi. He wrote the libretto himself and composed the opera in just nine months, although its premiere was delayed by the death of Chicago Opera’s chief. The new artistic director promised to make it up to Prokofiev with a lavish production (it reportedly cost $100,000, and the composer conducted it himself). At its 1921 premiere, critics were stumped, although the audience reportedly enjoyed it. One critic wrote: "The work is intended, one learns, to poke fun.

As far as I am able to discern, it pokes fun chiefly at those who paid money for it." But it was a success, and before long, it was performed in Prokofiev’s homeland and across Europe. Conversation starters When Chicago Opera commissioned Oranges, citrus growers in Florida and California fought over advertising rights for the opera, wanting to hang placards advertising their fruit in the theatre Prokofiev and Stravinsky almost came to blows over The Love for Three Oranges. Sitting in on a meeting where Prokofiev played the score to an interested presenter, Stravinsky refused to listen to more than Act I, angrily declaring the composer was wasting his time writing operas. As a crowd-pleaser, Prokofiev arranged a simple version of the popular March, but wrote in his diary: "The process of denuding for the sake of simplicity is highly disagreeable". The composer died on the same day as Stalin, and the crowds mourning Stalin were so great, it was three days before anyone could remove Prokofiev’s body from his apartment.

The Love for Three Oranges: Cheat Sheat - Sydney Opera House Sydney Opera House With over 40 shows a week there's something for everyone at Sydney Opera House. Search all our events and filter by date and genre. Search for events, videos or info... Or search by date The Love for Three Oranges: Cheat Sheat Page Controls Everything you need to know about Prokofiev's surreal, screwball fairytale for adults. Who was the composer? Sergei Prokofiev is one of the major composers of the 20th century: a Russian who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory before making his name as a composer and pianist. He is most famous for his ballet, Romeo and Juliet, and his work for orchestra and narrator, Peter and the Wolf . Like other great 20th-century composers, he played with harmony but his work isn't dissonant or 'difficult' - it's melodic, approachable and in this opera, lots of fun! Prokofiev died aged 61 after a long illness, on the same day as Joseph Stalin. What happens in the story? The Prince is melancholy, tragic poetry to blame. Prescription? Laughter!

While the court scrambles to amuse the prince, it's a witch that finally does the trick; tripping over and revealing her knickers. His laugh angers the witch, who curses the Prince with an obsessive love for three oranges. The Prince and his jester march off to find the oranges, kept in the kitchen of a murderous cook. But not everyone is on the prince's side; the Prime Minister is plotting to kill him! Does true love lie under that thick orange skin? Will the witch come back for revenge? Will the evil Prime Minister succeed? In this farcical fairytale, you never know what's around the corner. Who are the main players? The King of Clubs: ruler of an imaginary Kingdom The Prince: the King's son, struck down with melancholy Princess Clarissa: the King's niece, next in line for the throne Leandro: the Prime Minister Ruffaldino: jester Pantaloon, friend and advisor of the King Tchelio: a magician, protector of the King Fata Morgana: a witch, protector of Leandro Something to listen out for. Prokofiev's music is energetic, clever and very accessible.

Listen to how rhythm drives the action (the most famous example is that famous march. The characters are literally marching, but the music is also signaling the story moving inexorably on!) A journalist perhaps best described the music of the opera, as he reviewed the dress rehearsal in 1921: "Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium. Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New Year's Eve horns, harmonicas and old-fashioned musical beer steins that play when you lift them up... it sounds like the picture of a crazy Christmas tree drawn by a happy child," wrote Ben Hecht for the Chicago Daily News. He observes two critics disparaging the music and concludes ""perhaps ... music critics will fail to understand it and untutored [people] like ourselves will find in the hurdy-gurdy rhythms and contortions of Mr Prokofieff ... a strange delight. As if some one had given us a musical lollypop to suck and rub in our hair..." This production is... Bold, colourful fun, from the brilliant mind of director Francesca Zambello.

George Tsypin's kooky sets explore the fantasy world of this satirical fairytale, and Tania Noginova's costumes are larger than life. A little history Prokofiev was making waves in America with his music when the Chicago Opera enquired if he might write them an opera. The composer accepted a commission to produce an opera based on The Love for Three Oranges - a satirical, fairytale play by Carlo Gozzi. He wrote the libretto himself and composed the opera in just nine months, although its premiere was delayed by the death of Chicago Opera's chief. The new artistic director promised to make it up to Prokofiev with a lavish production (it reportedly cost $100,000, and the composer conducted it himself). At its 1921 premiere, critics were stumped, although the audience reportedly enjoyed it. One critic wrote: "The work is intended, one learns, to poke fun. As far as I am able to discern, it pokes fun chiefly at those who paid money for it." But it was a success, and before long, it was performed in Prokofiev's homeland and across Europe.

Conversation starters When Chicago Opera commissioned Oranges , citrus growers in Florida and California fought over advertising rights for the opera, wanting to hang placards advertising their fruit in the theatre. Prokofiev and Stravinsky almost came to blows over The Love for Three Oranges . Sitting in on a meeting where Prokofiev played the score to an interested presenter, Stravinsky refused to listen to more than Act I, angrily declaring the composer was wasting his time writing operas. As a crowd-pleaser, Prokofiev arranged a simple version of the popular March, but wrote in his diary: "The process of denuding for the sake of simplicity is highly disagreeable". The composer died on the same day as Stalin, and the crowds mourning Stalin were so great, it was three days before anyone could remove Prokofiev's body from his apartment. Discover the House More time to explore with extended hours - take a tour beneath the sails of Sydney's most iconic building.

Presenter Macbeth, The Love for Three Oranges, Armida, A Midsummer Night's Dream | Opera review | Music | The Guardian Macbeth, The Love for Three Oranges, Armida, A Midsummer Night's Dream Glyndebourne, East Sussex; Grange Park, Hampshire; Garsington, Oxfordshire Andrzej Dobber as Macbeth at Glyndebourne, with a chorus of witches. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Share on Messenger Close A suitable skein of magic threaded its way through four operas in three pastoral settings this week, a prelude to midsummer. Am I referring to the entrancing performances at Glyndebourne , Grange Park and Garsington? Yes and no since each had bewitching moments. But more prosaically, the potions and sorcery of benign magicians, zany witches, gap-toothed fairies and ensorcelled citrus fruit pop up in the opera plots themselves. Verdi wanted the witches in his Macbeth to be "trivial but in an exciting and original way". In an audacious production for Glyndebourne, first staged in 2007, Richard Jones has obeyed this instruction to the letter.

His girl-gang women live in caravans and terrorise the locals with their synchronised hip-flicking belligerence. Once seen, Ultz's cleverly debased Caledonian designs are impossible to forget. This is a world of baronial drip-dry tartan with a flat-pack bothy fit for murder and a ghost that oozes bloodily from a cardboard box, despite the bin-liner. This first revival, conducted by Vasily Petrenko making his UK opera conducting debut, establishes the staging as one of Glyndebourne's most brazen and rewarding. Each detail is intelligent and incisive, never obstructing Verdi's music but matching the lurid colours of the score as it lurches from black humour to stark catastrophe. Petrenko, ensemble lapses notwithstanding, captured these mood swerves with fervour and excitement, conjuring emotional choruses, thrilling brass fanfares and fortissimo climactic outbursts. Andrzej Dobber, returning as an anguished Macbeth, can muster tonal force, but he is prone to shout.

Stanislav Shvets' Banquo, wearing a kilt and a grimace and looking more like Gordon Brown than ever, found his form after a wayward start. As Lady Macbeth, Erika Sunnegardh occasionally struggled to scale the orchestra but gave a convincing performance especially in the OCD launderette episode, more usually thought of as the sleepwalking scene. Only the chorus of witches inhabit a plaid-free world. Yet they stick to their clans reflecting not the seven ages of man but, as some see it, the three eras of woman: pramface floozy, middle-aged slapper and flabby old bag. These supernatural creatures caused problems in Verdi's day. By the time he wrote his first version of the opera in 1847, Shakespeare's play had never been staged in Italy. The Catholic church condemned anything smacking of heretical hocus pocus fearing sensibilities might be affronted. Had they seen Richard Jones coming, they would have been right to worry. He's been startling audiences for at least two decades, since his 1988 scratch'n'sniff The Love for Three Oranges at English National Opera .

Prokofiev's brittle and demanding fairy-tale has scarcely been seen in the UK since, though the two events are not connected. It's a problem piece, requiring a large cast and much suspended belief on the part of the audience. Can it work? Grange Park's new production has a bold shot. The director-designer David Fielding, who has his own nice line in zestful dissent, has opted for theatre-of-cruelty: a clone-like chorus, space-hoppers, Sigmund Freud lookalikes, striped pyjamas, black suits, horn-rimmed glasses and, wisely, hardly a nod at the 18th-century Venetian commedia dell'arte of the Gozzi original. Written for Chicago on the eve of the roaring 20s, the theme is laughter as the best tonic. A bored prince is terminally depressed. Only when a gorgeous princess bursts out of an orange does he grin. Realism, morality and ordinary human emotion have no place in this artifice, except in the figure of Truffaldino (well sung by Wynne Evans), the court jester.

The plot fits together like an elaborate but meaningless piece of origami, and Prokofiev's crisp, angular score glitters and glints like one of the revolving mirror balls that hung from the ceiling. Conducted by Leo Hussain and skilfully played by the English Chamber Orchestra, the music sounded fresh and clever. Rebecca Cooper's Fata Morgana, Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts' Prince and Clive Bayley's King headed the large and capable cast. If it wasn't always quite slick, the achievement alone was miraculous. Already announced for next year at Grange Park: Tristan und Isolde, and an evening with Bryn Terfel. Not to be pipped at the supernatural post, Garsington staged Rossini's rarity Armida, featuring a badly behaved sorceress, crusading knights and, in Martin Duncan's handsome, absurdist staging conducted by David Parry, an entourage of blue rubber-suited mutants and flesh-pink furies straight out of the Mighty Boosh. If the bizarre plot elicits little more sympathy than The Love for Three Oranges, the well-executed score bursts with novelty and coloratura event. Bristol-born soprano Jessica Pratt, singing the title role, was stunning.

After 21 seasons, the final new production at Garsington, before next year's move to Wormsley, was Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a courageous choice. A few first-night hazards, on stage and off, led to a stilted first half. But the components are in place, and familiarity with this fiendish, diaphanous work will help. Steuart Bedford conducted lovingly if not quite incisively. The talented young singers all deserve mention. Space allows only one accolade: counter-tenor James Laing (Oberon), who was heart-stopping in "I know a bank". Daniel Slater's production, designed by Francis O'Connor, replaced Athenian palace and wood with a billet occupied by miniature armed forces (members of Trinity Boys Choir). A disarray of iron beds, Turkish rugs, make-do-and-mend quilts suggested a grand house – Garsington in its Bohemian past – ransacked by war. Or perhaps it was an oblique reference, at this turning point of the year, to the festival's own need to cast off and move on.

In the closing moments, with the sky still a haze of pink and blue, hundreds of fairy lights illuminated both the stage and the serried Irish yews in the shadows beyond. Even Dawkinite rationalists, not to mention operatic diehards, must succumb to such magic. Prokofiev - Love For Three Oranges - YouTube Prokofiev - Love For Three Oranges Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Uploaded on Aug 18, 2008 Prokofiev - Love For Three Oranges Category Classical Net Review - Prokofieff - The Love for Three Oranges The Love for Three Oranges Alain Vernhes – King of Clubs Martial Defontaine – the Prince (the King's son) Sandrine Piau – Ninette François Le Roux – Leandro, the Prime Minister Serghei Khomov – Truffaldino, a court jester Natasha Petrinsky – Princess Clarice Choir of De Nederlandse Opera Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra/Stephane Deneve Laurent Pelly – Stage Director, Costume Designer Recorded Live in 2005 at the Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam Opus Arte OA0957D 2DVDs 144min Dolby Digital DTS LPCM Stereo Anamorphic Widescreen This entertaining production of Prokofieff's most popular comic opera, recorded in Amsterdam in 2005, uses the opera's original French text – a wise move, in my opinion, as Russian-language performances sound too heavy. Stage director and costume designer Laurent Pelly emphasizes the theme of playing cards.

For example, the Prince sleeps in an empty box of them, and, during the scene in the desert, they provide shelter from the oppressive heat. Giant cards also serve as mobile flats, which are efficiently wheeled around by stage-hands during scene changes. The implication is that all the characters are living in a house of cards. If this performance is rather lacking in laughter, it's not only because Pelly eschews slapstick and cheap laughs. Comedy is notoriously more difficult to perform than tragedy, and that difficulty is doubled on the operatic stage. If this performance also does not touch the heart, blame Prokofieff, who drops the commedia dell'arte mask only during the nearly fatal first meeting between Princess Ninetta and the Prince. Otherwise, this is Prokofieff at his most relentlessly clever. Hearing this opera, it is hard to believe that Carlo Gozzi, the Italian playwright who wrote the original Love for Three Oranges, also wrote what became the basis of Puccini's heartbreaking Turandot. Despite the popularity of the orchestral suite, and the famous March in particular, this is not an opera based on set pieces – arias, duets, and the like.

The Love for Three Oranges depends on the strength of the entire cast (and the conductor) to succeed. Fortunately, this production's musical values are strong. As the Prince, tenor Martial Defontaine is on stage much of the time, and he conserves his resources well in order to have something good left for his first scene with Ninetta. Sandrine Piau's Ninetta is sung with fairy-tale silver in the voice; it is interesting to hear an early music specialist in a twentieth-century opera! As often is the case, the "bad guys" are more notable – Petrinsky, Shafajinskaja, and Le Roux make the most of their opportunities. Richard Angas's brief scene as Creonte's grotesque cook – watch out for her soup ladle! – is very funny. As Truffaldino, Sergei Khomov shows comic potential, and Willard White is an impressive magician. Stéphane Denève keeps everything moving along, but not at the expense of precision, which is absolutely necessary for this opera's success. The bonus material includes a 25-minute "introduction" which indeed should be viewed prior to watching the opera proper.

Like the opera itself, it is breezy and uncovers no great profundities, but it does include interviews with Pelly, Denève, and several of the singers. (I feel it was a bad decision to interview some of them in English, however, because their responses are close to unintelligible.) Sound (LPCM stereo or DTS surround) and image (16:9) are excellent, and the English subtitling is well done. The Love for Three Oranges (by Sergei Prokofiev) - Synopsis and Study Notes Music with Ease > 20th Century Opera > The Love for Three Oranges (by Sergei Prokofiev) The Love for Three Oranges (by Sergei Prokofiev) Opera with a prologue and four acts. Written in 1919. Premiere: USA: Chicago Lyric Theater, 30 December 1921. USSR: Marinsky Theater, Leningrad (now St Petersberg), 18 Febuary 1926. Libretto: Sergei Prokofiev, bases on Carlo Gozzi's play, Fiabla dell'amore delle tre melarancie (Love Fable of Three Oranges).

Prologue Tragedy, Comedy, Lyric Drama and Farce are discussing what kind of entertainment should be performed. Suddenly masked characters (the Ridiculous People, played by actors who represent the members of the audience) burst in and demand that an opera be shown. Act 1 The Prince, the King's son and heir, is suffering from melancholy which his doctors say will prove fatal unless someone can make him laugh. So the King orders comic entertainments. However, the King's enemies, Princess Clarisse amd the prime minister Leandro, are trying to prevent any laughter as they are hoping to install Clarice on the throne. Leandro feeds the Prince tragic verses to keep him in a serious mood. Clarice and Leandro try to stop the court clown, Truffaldino, making him laugh. Act 2 The first entertainments do not amuse the Prince, but then by accident the evil sorceress, Fata Morgana, slips and falls -- and the Prince laughs. Fata Morgana is enraged and makes him fall in love with three oranges. The Prince has to find them and he sets out at once into the desert, accompanied by the little devil Farfarello and the clown Truffaldino.

Act 3 Chelio, the King's magic protector, comes to the Prince's aid, discovering that the oranges are located in the castle of Creonte. Chelio helps the Prince and Truffaldino steal the oranges from the castle -- with the aid of a magic ribbon to distract the Cook. Chelio warns that the oranges must only be opened near water. The Prince and the clown carry the oranges into the desert but find that the latter have grown very large and heavy. The Prince falls asleep. Truffaldino is thirsty and, forgetting Chelio's warning, cuts one orange open while he is still far from any water. A beautiful princess emerges and asks for water. Hoping to find water, Truffaldino opens a second orange. Another princess steps out of this orange and she too asks for water. Both princesses faint away. Truffaldino runs away. The Prince awakes and finds the two princesses, both dead. He cuts open the third orange. Out steps Princess Ninetta. The Prince and Ninetta fall in love. Fortunately the Ridulous People arrive with a bucket of water and she survives. Smeralina, Fata Morgana's servant, changes Princess Ninetta into a rat.

The King and his courtiers arrive. Smeraldina convinces the King that the Prince promised to marry her. Act 4 Fata Morgana, the evil sorceress who is also an enemy of the King, is locked up by the Ridiculous People while they await the arrival of the King's protector, Chelio. The King, the Prince and Smeraldina arrive and are shocked to see a giant rat sitting on the King's throne. But Chelio succeeds in changing the rat back into Princess Ninetta. The King orders the traitors Clarice, Leandro and Smeraldina to be executed but they escape together with Fata Morgana. The Ridiculous People drink a toast to the happy couple, the Prince and his Princess Ninetta. Study Notes on The Love for Three Oranges The libretto for this opera is anti-naturalistic and some would say actually quite silly (with the Prince falling in love with three large oranges). But at the same time it is a delightful fairy tale, wherein true love is patient and endures tribulations -- and finally triumphs. The pace of the opera is fast right from beginning to end -- right up to a high-speed finale.

This leaves little room for arias. Musically the opera synthesizes two different strands of Prokofiev's music: the aggressive and rhythmically-driven Scythian Suite (in which the composer had attempted to imitate the primitive life rhythms of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring) and the refined elegance of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. Share this page: HDVD ARTS - Titles - The Love for Three Oranges The Love for Three Oranges Sergei Prokofiev The Love for Three Oranges opera to a libretto written by the composer based on a play by Carlo Gozzi. Directed 2005 by Laurent Pelly at De Nederlandse Opera (Muziektheater).

Stars Alain Vernhes, Martial Defontaine, Natascha Petrinsky, François Le Roux, Serghei Khomov, Marcel Boone, Sir Willard White, Anna Shafajinskaja, Sylvia Kevorkian, Magali de Prelle, Sandrine Piau, Richard Angas, Alexander Vassiliev, Marianna Kulikova, Sergei Khomov, Ruud Kok, Robert Kops, Willem Korteiling, Jan Majoor, Wojtek Okraska, Jan Polak, Harry Teeuwen, Martin Vijgenboom, Bert Visser, and Arjan Wiering. Stéphane Denève conducts the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chorus of De Nederlandse Opera (Chorus Master Martin Wright). Sets by Chantal Thomas; costumes by Laurent Pelly; lighting by Joël Adam; choreography by Laura Scozzi. TV direction biy Misjel Vermeiren. Released 2008, disc has PCM 5.1 sound. Grade: A When I was a kid, we didn't have HDVD. We didn't have TV. We had radio and 8mm black and white home movies. Kids loved the serials on radio.

I waited all week for "The FBI in Peace and War." I wasn't interested in the propaganda---I loved the theme song, a jaunty march that sent me careening about the kitchen. I asked my mom, "Where did the music come from?" She said, "From a modern opera about oranges. It was too crazy to perform, but people like that song." Mom was wrong about one thing. The Love for Three Oranges wasn't modern. The 4 Ages of Opera are (1) Early Opera, (2) Age of Aria, (3) Age of Orchestration, and (4) Modern Opera. The Age of Orchestration ended and Modern Opera began in 1926 when Puccini finished ‎ Turandot. Oranges was first performed in 1921, so it came too soon to be modern. But it is crazy, because it's a parody of all opera up to 1921. In Oranges, the Age or Orchestration pulls the top down on its own coffin. Because this is a long insiders joke, you have to know a lot about opera to thoroughly enjoy Oranges.

Still, for the novice there's plenty of fast action and broad strokes such as beautiful princesses released from captivity only to immediately --- well, I'll not give it away. Because the singers in Oranges are reduced to mocking others, the folks who normally play subservient roles in opera get to run amuck--- the chorus, the orchestra, the conductor, the set designer, the costume maker, the lighting guys, etc. No better crew for this trip down the rapids than De Nederlandse Opera. The production, video take, and sound recording for this disc were praised by everyone even in DVD. So if you are an Oranges fan, you have to have this in HDVD. If you are an opera beginner, get this disc and watch it cold. Then watch it every now and then as your knowledge of opera grows---each time you will probably appreciate the Oranges more. We still need for an opera expert to write us a detailed review pointing out, with timestamps from this disc, the specific composers, musical styles, and opera conventions that Prokofiev skewers in his score of Oranges.

San Francisco Symphony - Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Opus 33b San Francisco Symphony Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Opus 33b Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Opus 33b SERGEI SERGEIEVICH PROKOFIEV BORN: April 23, 1891. Sontsovka, in the Ekaterinoslav district of Ukraine DIED: March 5, 1953. Moscow COMPOSED: Begun early in 1919, completed on October 1 of that year. In 1924 Prokofiev derived his Symphonic Suite from the opera WORLD PREMIERE: December 30, 1921, by the Chicago Grand Opera at the Chicago Auditorium (in French, as L’Amour des trois oranges), with the composer conducting. The Suite was introduced by Serge Koussevitzky in Paris on November 19, 1925 SFS PERFORMANCES: FIRST—April 1955 with Enrique Jordá conducting.

MOST RECENT—June 2007, as part of the SFS Prokofiev Festival, led by Michael Tilson Thomas INSTRUMENTATION: 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, tubular bells, xylophone, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, bass drum, snare drum, tambourine, and strings DURATION: About 14 mins When the Bolshevik Revolution hit, Prokofiev decided to ride out the storm elsewhere, so in May 1918 he left Russia for what he figured would be a visit of several months that ultimately led him to New York. The Revolution did not blow over, with the result that Prokofiev spent the first half of his career abroad, in New York for a few years and then in the avant-garde climate of Paris, where he settled in 1923.

He would return to Russia in 1936, precisely when Soviet musical life was becoming consolidated under the iron-fisted auspices of the Union of Soviet Composers. Prokofiev weathered the challenge reasonably well until 1948, when he was censured by the Central Committee of the Communist Party (along with other prominent composers) for writing music “marked with formalist perversions . . . alien to the Soviet people.” Had he survived until the cultural thaw of the post-Stalin era, it is conceivable that his professional fortune might have improved. As it was, he did not: Prokofiev and Stalin died on the same day. These difficult times lay far in the future when Prokofiev composed The Love for Three Oranges in 1919, but from the outset his career in the West failed to blossom with the vigor he had hoped for. “I had expected my musical career to be as smooth-sailing in America as it had been in recent years in Russia,” he wrote in his 1941 Autobiography. “But I was mistaken.

I found myself in a musical world where everything was excellently organized but utterly different from what I had been accustomed to.” Nonetheless, he was viewed with interest by his new public and quickly snagged a contract to make a handful of piano-roll recordings. Artists’ managers offered to sign him on for two- or three-year contracts—the idea being that an introductory tour might not make money but would set the scene for more profitable engagements in ensuing seasons—but, as the composer explained, “I was so sure that I would be returning home shortly that I didn’t want to bind myself for any length of time.” If New York took a mildly encouraging wait-and-see attitude towards Prokofiev, Chicago greeted him with a hearty slap on the back. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, quickly presented both his First Piano Concerto (with the composer as soloist) and the Scythian Suite. The catalyst for these performances was Cyrus McCormick, the farm-equipment baron, who had met Prokofiev in 1917 when he traveled to Petrograd with a trade delegation to check out business opportunities.

McCormick was an enthusiast for modern music, and among the souvenirs he brought back home to Chicago was a copy of the Scythian Suite, which paved the way for the Chicago Symphony’s performance. He had insisted that Prokofiev send him a telegram if he ever found himself in the United States, and not much time passed before Prokofiev did just that. While Prokofiev was in Chicago, McCormick introduced him to all the movers and shakers in the cultural scene. One who was intrigued was Cleofonte Campanini, director of the Chicago Opera, who expressed interest in staging Prokofiev’s first opera (not counting student works), The Gambler, after Dostoyevsky’s novel. Unfortunately, the orchestral score was in Russia and would be difficult to obtain; so Campanini moved on to the idea of commissioning a new opera from the young artist. By January 1919 a contract was signed for The Love for Three Oranges, its subject growing out of a published Russian adaptation by the director Vsevelod Meyerhold of a commedia dell’arte tale by the eighteenth-century Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi.

Prokofiev would recall: “The play, with its mixture of fairy-tale, humor and satire, had a strong appeal for me, and during the long journey [to America] I had even sketched a plan of sorts in my mind.” Prokofiev finished his new opera in June 1919 and turned in the completely orchestrated score by October 1, as stipulated in his contract. The production was moving ahead at the Chicago Opera, and, as Prokofiev reported, “everything was going splendidly when Campanini died suddenly in December, and the theatre, afraid to continue with the production without him, postponed it until the following season. I was left high and dry without the opera and with no concerts to speak of.” Prokofiev therefore headed off to London and Paris, where he consulted with Serge Diaghilev about a revival of his ballet Chout. Back in the United States in the autumn of 1920, Prokofiev picked a fight with the Chicago Opera by demanding compensation for the year’s delay. The interim director refused to concede, and the opera again failed to make it into the season’s offerings.

Not until the end of 1921 did the long-planned production come to fruition, the new executive director, Mary Garden (retired from her role as diva), having acquiesced to the composer’s demands and, moreover, promised the composer as many rehearsals as he wanted. Set in eleven scenes unrolling over a Prologue and four acts, The Love for Three Oranges boasts a complicated, borderline absurdist plot that we need not try to fathom in any detail for present purposes. One strand of its story involves a depressed prince who finally cheers up over the misfortune of the sorceress Fata Morgana. To get revenge at him, Fata Morgana causes him to fall head over heels in love with three oranges, which are in the kitchen of the witch Creonta, where they are guarded by a gigantic cook armed with a ladle. The oranges are somehow acquired, grow to enormous size, and are cut open to reveal that they each contain a fairy princess.

The first two princesses die of thirst in a desert, but the third is preserved by a bucket produced by a group of Eccentrics; and after a good many threats and misadventures, the Prince and the Princess are united as a couple. “The premiere on 30 December 1921 brought a full house and on the face of it was a big success,” wrote Prokofiev. “The Chicagoans were both proud and embarrassed to be presenting a ‘modernist premiere’ which, according to the newspapers, had already cost some 250,000 dollars.” For all its bizarre modernity, The Love for Three Oranges was also playful, charming, and ironic, and it doesn’t skimp on opportunities for brilliant stagecraft. The vocal parts adhere to a generally declamatory style—this is not an opera for extractable arias—but the musical texture is everywhere delightful, making this curious exercise in modernism easy for audiences to embrace. A few years after the premiere Prokofiev created his six-movement Symphonic Suite out of sections of the opera, and the suite would go on to achieve popularity that overshadowed that of the opera itself.

“The Eccentrics” is assembled from material in the Prologue, in which the Eccentrics argue with Tragedians, Comedians, Lyricists, and Empty Heads about what sort of theatrical evening ought to ensue. In “Tchélio the Magician and Fata Morgana Play Cards” (subtitled “Scène infernale,” Scene in Hell) we are ushered into a scene in which the sorcerer Tchélio and the witch Fata Morgana play a high-stakes game of cards on which hangs the fate of their respective charges, the King of Clubs and the King of Spades; Tchélio loses all three hands to Fata Morgana, who will now go on to play an important role in the succeeding action. The ensuing March is one of the most familiar items in Prokofiev’s catalogue. Swaggering and grotesque, it runs as a recurrent theme through The Love for Three Oranges, somewhat adapted when reprised. For the Symphonic Suite Prokofiev created a conflation of the various versions, but for the most part this follows the March as it is presented as an entr’acte connecting the first two scenes of Act Two.

The Scherzo is similarly an entr’acte between the first two scenes of Act Three. The Prince, accompanied by his court jester, has been lifted by an enormous wind and blown off to Creonta’s palace, where they are to abduct the three oranges that have captured the Prince’s heart. “The Prince and the Princess” conflates music from Act Three, Scene Three, set in the desert, where the princesses are extracted from the oranges and languish with thirst, and where one of them survives and embarks on a love duet with the Prince. The Symphonic Suite concludes with “The Flight,” drawn from the final scene of the opera, in which various miscreants try to escape from the throne room in the palace, only to fall through a trap door that Fata Morgana has opened—and the strings make their downward tumble perfectly audible. Prokofiev made a piano arrangement of the March and Scherzo, and he recorded them on piano rolls for the Aeolian Duo-Art company. Of the entire Symphonic Suite—or of the opera itself, for that matter—there is no question that the big hit is the March.

In January 1927 it figured in the proceedings when Prokofiev returned for his first visit to the USSR after an absence of nearly a decade, under the aegis of the Persimfans orchestral ensemble. Prokofiev chronicled the moment in his Autobiography: “On 18 January I stepped on Soviet soil at Bigosovo, and on the 19th I arrived in Moscow. How can I describe my feelings on returning to my native land! I was met by the Persimfans people and driven . . . straight to the Metropole Hotel where I found many old friends awaiting me. . . . I went to a rehearsal of the orchestra. As we approached the hall I heard the March from the Three Oranges being played. ‘They are taking it a little too slow,’ I said, thinking they were rehearsing it, but it turned out that the orchestra was playing the March in my honor.” —James M.

Keller More About the Music Recordings: Michael Tilson Thomas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Sony) | Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony (Universal Classics Reading: Prokofiev: A Biography, From Russia to the West 1891-1935, by David Nice (Yale University Press) | Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, by Harlow Robinson (Viking) | Prokofiev, by Claude Samuel, translated by Miriam John (Marion Boyars) | Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev, edited and translated by Harlow Robinson (Northeastern University Press) | Sergey Prokofiev, by Daniel Jaffé (Phaidon) (May 2016) Prokofiev - Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, op. 33 - Utah Symphony Prokofiev - Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, op.

33 Sergei Prokofiev (1891 — 1953): Selections from Romeo and Juliet Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani, snare drum, wood block, bass drum, suspended cymbal, tambourine, glockenspiel, triangle, tenor saxophone, xylophone, piano; strings Background Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is the most popular, enduring and influential of all love stories — a sweeping claim and difficult to prove, but also irrefutable common sense. This tragic romance gives us the world's paradigmatic "star-crossed lovers" — a phrase that originates in Shakespeare's prologue to the play. Musicologists tell us that there are about 75 versions of Romeo and Juliet's story in the opera literature alone (with only those by Bellini and Gounod in the standard repertory).

In ballet, Prokofiev's setting stands apart as the great musical narrative of the story, but Tchaikovsky's tone poem, condensed and moody, is also effective when danced. These quintessential young lovers have invaded every form and style of art. No genre is exempt — not even rock, which gave us Bob Hamilton and Freddie Gorman's song "Just Like Romeo and Juliet," a hit single for The Reflections in 1964. Like those of his compatriots Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, Prokofiev's great ballet scores, Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella, work as abstract music in the concert hall without the benefit of dance or text. But just a glance at the names of the dances is enough to remind us of Prokofiev's greatness as a storyteller; the music compels us with the ebbs and flows of the unseen story as well as its sheer beauty. Prokofiev's narrative powers can come as a bit of a shock to some American listeners, because the quirks of history have tended to fragment our view of his talents, especially during the Cold War.

Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky were the two giants of Russian classical music born in the last quarter of the 19th century; to their names we can add Sergei Rachmaninoff, born in 1873, perhaps the last of the late Romantics; and Dmitri Shostakovich, born in 1906. All were virtuoso pianists; all survived Russia's Bolshevik revolution and faced state mediation of their artistic lives in the USSR, where artistic expression — like pretty much everything else — was considered an instrumentality of the state. Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky lived and died as expatriates; Prokofiev, though he traveled extensively outside Russia, returned there. For Shostakovich, who was denounced by the Kremlin after the success of his satirical opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, the attempt to leave Russia might well have meant death for the composer and his family. In the decades after their deaths, their respective reputations in the West seemed to have settled into a consistent hierarchy, like the finish of a musical horserace — with the aristocratic Stravinsky, authoritative and statesmanlike, ahead of the rest.

He is followed by Prokofiev and Shostakovich in second and third places, and with the melancholy Rachmaninoff in a luxurious but uncomfortable niche of his own. (He died in his adopted state of California after a disappointing piano tour of the U.S.) Looking beyond the pointlessness of viewing music as a competition, it's no coincidence that their stature corresponded to the amount of time they spent away from the homeland. According to prevailing wisdom, the cosmopolitan Stravinsky bestrode the various styles of 20th-century music and all that came before it; Prokofiev's music, brash and avant-garde in his youth, settled into a more dignified maturity; and Shostakovich, with his own and his family's survival at stake in the Stalinist regime, was forced by the USSR's cultural bureaucracy to compromise his art. But that way of thinking unexpectedly changed in the late 1970s, and has been unsettled since.

The music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich and their relationship with the Soviet cultural apparatus had to be reconsidered when Shostakovich's shocking memoir, Testimony, was spirited into the West and published in translation by a colleague of Shostakovich's, the musicologist Solomon Volkov in 1979. The controversy surrounding this volume not only not only forced us to reevaluate Shostakovich's most important compositions, but also revealed that even Prokofiev's admirers tend to know only a part of his musical output, as if there were three Prokofievs: the master of the piano who wrote some of the most important piano concertos and sonatas of the 20th century; the sophisticated, lapidary symphonist; and the theatrical composer whose riveting narrative compositions — such as the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella and the operas War and Peace, The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges — are acknowledged for their greatness but rarely seen on American stages. Since its premiere in 1936, Prokofiev's charming Peter and the Wolf has been presented in the U.S. far more often than any of his other works.

The prodigiously gifted Prokofiev earned a reputation as something of a musical firebrand early in life. Just a year after beginning his formal music training at age 11 with the eminent Ukrainian-born composer Reinhold Glière, he entered the Moscow Conservatory; his written recollections of this period, as well as his early compositions, suggest that Prokofiev was not a troublemaker, but possessed a musical mind that was questing and eager to experiment with new trends in tonality, harmony and rhythm. In his "Classical" Symphony, written when he was 25, we hear both his mastery of the past (it is considered an homage to Haydn) and his eagerness for the future. By then, Prokofiev had already earned a reputation as a rising young composer. He had signed a contract with the music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson five years earlier, and at age 22 had traveled to London and Paris.

Nine years younger than Stravinsky, he met Stravinsky's patron Diaghilev in London and composed several short ballet scores for him; the following year, Stravinsky's association with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes would catapult the older composer to international notoriety after the Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring. Musicologists are puzzled as to why Prokofiev was allowed to travel so freely, and why he chose to return. And while there is plenty of background commentary to analyze, most of it fails to consider the depth of the attachment that Russian artists seem to feel for their homeland; all too often, if they cannot be happy there, neither can they be happy anywhere else. For us, in listening to Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev's travels in the early 1920s crucially gave him experience to draw upon in composing this ballet score more than a decade later. He completed most of it in 1935. The ballet was composed based on a synopsis by Adrian Piotrovsky and Sergey Radlov.

Question: Who wrote the music of the opera The Love of Three Oranges ?
Answer: PROKOFIEV