Three Oranges

The 28-year-old composer had come all the way from Russia to Chicago to conduct the premiere of his new opera. But sad news awaited him. The Chicago Opera Co., which had commissioned the work, just couldn't make it come off. It was a silly story--about a morose young prince who, under the spell of a witch, falls in love with three oranges. And both on the stage and in the pit, it seemed to be continually poking grand opera in the ribs.

Its young composer, a bespectacled string-bean of a man named Sergei Prokofiev, made some revisions and the Chicago company decided to produce it after all. It flopped. Prokofiev got to conduct his The Love for Three Oranges three times--twice in Chicago in 1921, once in Manhattan in 1922. Then, disappointed, he took off for Paris, and, eventually, for Russia. Only the pert little march from the Three Oranges lingered on.*

Great Cheer. Last week, if he was still in touch with news from the U.S., ailing, 58-year-old Composer Prokofiev could take great cheer in the belated success of his 30-year-old opera.

The New York City Opera's opera-thirsty little Director Laszlo Halasz decided last year to give the Three Oranges a squeeze. He fixed one flaw right away by having the libretto translated from French into English. New sets, a bright young cast, some comical choreography by Charles Weidman, and some overall Halasz humor fixed the rest. The first production last year was a hit. Halasz quickly scheduled five more sellout performances. Next to Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, Three Oranges became City Opera's biggest hit--big enough for Halasz to open his spring season with it last week.

Great Laughs. In Three Oranges, Prokofiev borrowed a little from the old technique of a play within a play--or rather, an opera within a play. What still seemed brand new was the way he used his chorus as a stage audience. Dressed in evening clothes and seated in boxes on either side of the stage, the chorus not only hisses the villain and boos the witch, but actually rushes onstage at one point and hustles the old crone off. When two of the orange-housed princesses die of thirst in the desert, the stage audience saves the third by rushing to the rescue with a fire-bucket of water brought in from the wings. Biggest laugh: Basso Richard Wentworth's grotesquely funny dance and aria as the huge, bosomy lady cook from whom the prince steals the three oranges by charming her with a piece of ribbon.

Three Oranges is certainly the broadest burlesque ever set on an opera stage, and the richest fun ever made out of grand opera's robustious airs. Composer Prokofiev's score makes it a work of art as well. Witty, clean and colorful, it fits the Three Oranges like a second skin.

* To become, among other things, the weekly curtain raiser for the radio thriller, The FBI in Peace and War.

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