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Bewildering Variety
'The Love of Three Oranges'
at Grange Park Opera,
reviewed by ROBERT HUGILL
As soon as his opera The Love of Three Oranges was premièred (in Chicago in 1921), Prokofiev had to field questions as to what the piece was about and whether it was a complicated political allegory. Prokofiev had chosen to base his opera on one of Gozzi's Commedia dell'Arte plays. In translating the play into an opera Prokofiev had replaced some of the Commedia dell'Arte elements with surrealism. The result is a piece of mad-cap mayhem which may, or may not, have hidden depths. The story involves a hypochondriac prince going in search of his love, but the superstructure with which Prokofiev surrounds this tale is almost more important than the tale itself...
Copyright © 23 June 2010
Robert Hugill,
London UK
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