The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev, From (2018/2018), Directed by Alain Maratrat,, Conductor Anton Torbeev, Valery Gergiev, Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, Vladivostok, Russia

The first comic opera by Sergei Prokofiev, based on a play by the 18th-century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, is a work of youthful directness, contagiously cheerful, attracting with freshness and richness of musical colors. The composer wrote this opera in the first years of his stay abroad, but its idea is connected with the theatrical impressions of pre-revolutionary Russia. In 1914-1915, Vsevolod Meyerhold published the magazine Love for Three Oranges, turning Gozzi's play into a manifesto of the movement for the renewal of stage forms. It was he who proposed the script for the future opera, which was conceived as a parody of theatrical clichés and the notorious opera vampuka. Prokofiev sought to create a "fun performance" that would attract with a mixture of fairy tales, jokes and satire. Therefore, "The Love for Three Oranges" is close to the type of a magical fantasy revue with a rapid change of diverse episodes. “In the music of our time,” says the composer, “they prefer vivacity, speed and onslaught.” And he saturates the opera with continuous movement and sharp rhythms, giving the performance an enchanting character. The inventive wit of the young Prokofiev, whose fiery red hair and indomitable energy also evoked “orange” associations among his contemporaries, is especially close to the creative style of the French director Alain Maratre and his team. In the performance of the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theater you can find all the bright signs of this style. The light “clothing” of the stage, giving the space air and additional volume, amazing costumes and headdresses of the characters, but above all, an inexhaustible fiction with which every situation, every plot twist is played out. As in other productions of Maratr, the main convention of the theater is absent here - the division into spectators and participants in the action. Interactive interaction of artists with the audience allows them to feel like a part of the performance, which gives a charge of theatrical vitamin C even to those who