VI. “Evening” (Andante teneroso, F major, 3-8). Prokofieff’s knack of making unusual melodic intervals sound perfectly natural is here well illustrated. A solo flute intones the opening bars of a pleasant song-like tune, the rest of which is given to the solo clarinet. Still in the same reflective mood, the music continues with a passage of orchestral arpeggios, while the first violins take their turn with the melody. A middle portion in A-flat major presents some measures of syncopation. With a change of key to C major and again to F major, the section ends tranquilly with a snatch of the opening tune.
VII. “Moonlit Meadows” (Andantino, D major, 2-4). The solo flute opens this section with a smooth-flowing melody which rather makes the rounds, though in more or less altered form. The section ends quite simply with three chords.
This transcription departs but slightly from the piano originals, and when it does so it is because the composer has obviously felt the need of a stronger accent here or some figure there, unimportant in themselves, which might serve to bolster up the Suite.
March from the Opera, “The Love of Three Oranges”, Opus 33-A
It was Cleofonte Campanini, leading conductor of the Chicago Opera Company, who approached Prokofieff early in 1919 for an opera. Prokofieff first offered “The Gambler”, of which he possessed only the piano part, having left the orchestral score behind in the library of the Maryinsky Theatre of Leningrad. The offer was put aside for a second proposal—a project Prokofieff had already been toying with in Russia. This was an opera inspired in part by a device prominent in the Italian tradition of Commedia dell’Arte and based, as a story, on an Italian classic. The idea excited Campanini, and a contract was speedily signed. The piano score was completed by the following June, and in October the orchestral score was ready for submission. Preparations were made for a production in Chicago, when Campanini suddenly died. An entire season went by before its world premiere was finally achieved under the directorship of Mary Garden. This occurred on December 30, 1921, at the Chicago Auditorium, with Prokofieff conducting and Nina Koshetz making her American debut as the Fata Morgana. A French version was used, prepared by Prokofieff and Vera Janacoupolos from the original Russian text of the composer. Press and public were friendly, if not over-enthusiastic.
Less than two months later, on February 14, 1922, the Chicago Opera Company presented the opera for the first time in New York, at the Manhattan Opera House, with Prokofieff himself again conducting. This time the critics were far from friendly. One of them remarked waspishly: “The cost of the production is $130,000, which is $43,000 for each orange. The opera fell so flat that its repetition would spell financial ruin.” There were no further performances that season. Indeed it was not till November 1, 1949, that “The Love of Three Oranges” returned to American currency. It was on that night that Laszlo Halasz introduced the work into the repertory of the New York City Opera Company at the City Center of Music and Drama. The opera was presented in a skilful English version made by Victor Seroff. The production was “an almost startling success,” in the words of Olin Downes. “The opera became overnight the talk of the town and took a permanent place in the repertory of the company. This was due in large part to the character of the production itself, which so well became the fantasy and satire of the libretto, and the dynamic power of Prokofieff’s score. An additional factor in the success was, without doubt, the development of taste and receptivity to modern music on the part of the public which had taken place in the intervening odd quarter of a century since the opera first saw the light.”
Prokofieff based his libretto on Carlo Gossi’s “Fiaba dell’amore delle tre melarancie” (The Tale of the Love of the Three Oranges). Gozzi, an eighteenth-century dramatist and story-teller, had a genius for giving fresh form to old tales and legends and for devising new ones. The tales were called fiabe, or fables. Later dramatists found them a fertile source of suggestions for plot, and opera composers have been no less indebted to this gifted teller of tales. Puccini’s “Turandot” is only one of at least six operas founded on Gozzi’s masterly little fiaba of legendary China. The vein of satire running through Gozzi’s fiabe has also attracted subsequent writers and composers. It is not surprising that Prokofieff, no mean satirist himself, found inspiration for an opera in one of these delicious fiabe.
In view of the great popularity which “The Love of Three Oranges” has won in recent seasons in America, it may be of some practical use and interest to the readers of this monograph to provide them with an outline of the plot. I originally wrote the synopsis that follows for “The Victor Book of Operas” in the 1949 issue revised and edited for Simon & Schuster by myself and Robert Bagar. “The Love of Three Oranges” is divided into a Prologue and Four Acts.
PROLOGUE
SCENE: Stage, with Lowered Curtain and Grand Proscenium, on Each Side of Which are Little Balconies and Balustrades. An artistic discussion is under way among four sets of personages on which kind of play should be enacted on the present occasion. The Glooms, clad in appropriately somber roles, argue for tragedy. The Joys, in costumes befitting their temperament, hold out for romantic comedy. The Empty-heads disagree with both and call for frank farce. At last, the Jesters (also called the Cynics) enter, and succeed in silencing the squabbling groups. Presently a Herald enters to announce that the King of Clubs is grieving because his son never smiles. The various personages now take refuge in balconies at the sides of the stage, and from there make comments on the play that is enacted. But for their lack of poise and dignity, they would remind one of the chorus in Greek drama.