The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev, ut 28 sep 2021, Od (2021/2021), Režírované Natalia Dychenko,, Dirigent Evgeny Khokhlov, Samara Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Samara, Russia

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his first opera when he was only nine years old. It was a fairy tale called "The Giant", and already in it all Prokofiev appeared as an opera composer: a librettist himself, well aware of theatrical conventions, and a lover of non-trivial plot moves. Subsequently, Prokofiev wrote eight more operas: from the one-act "Maddalena" (1913) to the epic, stretching over two evenings "War and Peace" (1943); from the mystical Fiery Angel (1928) to the ideologically correct Tale of a Real Man (1948). There are two comical ones - "Betrothal in a Monastery" (1946) and "Love for Three Oranges" (1921). Initially, the idea of ​​an opera about three oranges came from the legendary director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who published in Petrograd in 1914-1916 a magazine about the theater called “Love for Three Oranges”. The very first issue of the magazine published a play of the same name, written by Meyerhold in collaboration with director Vladimir Solovyov and poet Konstantin Vogak and based on a comic fairy tale by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, author of the famous Turandot. Meyerhold specifically gave Prokofiev to read the play with the expectation that he would write an opera. Sergei Prokofiev did indeed write the music and composed his own libretto based on the play, but this happened already in America, commissioned by the Chicago Opera House. The opera was ready in October 1919, and the production took place in December 1921 and was a great success. In America, "Three Oranges" was performed in French. In 1926, the first production of "Love for Three Oranges" in Russian took place at the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater. The performance was staged by Meyerhold's student Sergei Radlov (1892-1956) and Nikolai Foregger (1892-1939), who later became the chief director and artistic director of the Kuibyshev Opera Theater (1938-1939). But in Kuibyshev-Samara, "Three Oranges" was never staged. The present performance is the first. The performance was included in the long list of the Russian national award "Golden Mask" -2021 (for the performance of the role of Truffaldino by Anatoly Nevdakh).