Semperoper Dresden – Sergei Prokofiev: Opera becomes a fair

The prince is seriously ill because the scheming minister Leander is literally feeding him bad verses. The good magician Chelio and the evil fairy Fata Morgana play with cards to decide their fate. The prince can finally laugh and is healed – but immediately Fata Morgana enchants him with the love of three oranges. To get the oranges, he even ventures into Creonta’s palace. The giant cook is waiting there, who uses her soup ladle to beat intruders to a pulp. This is followed by a path through the desert and finally the meeting with Princess Ninetta, who was trapped in the third orange. It’s no longer surprising when Ninetta is quickly transformed into a large rat. There is also a rather helpless king, a group of doctors and a group of devils, as well as supporters of tragedy and comedy and the group of oddballs who ultimately prevail. The list is not complete.

When Sergei Prokokiev composed “The Love of the Three Oranges” in 1919 on behalf of the Chicago Opera, he had American listeners in mind and simplified his musical language. In fact, this work is more accessible than “The Players” from 1917 and “The Fiery Angel” from 1922/23 and remains Prokofiev’s most frequently performed opera to this day. This is also because it is colorful in every respect: in its plot, the stage effects, but also in the slim, rhythm-driven music. The well-known march, which is heard several times as part of the court ceremonies, is an example of this: a quick, energetic, springy movement and a melody that is memorable and shows its pitfalls as soon as you try to sing it. It is always a small harmonic turn away from the expected continuation and plays attractively with the tonality without dissolving it.

The events are at best loosely connected and sometimes not very consistent. Should one therefore speak of the unconscious and dream logic, as director Evgeny Titov did in the program? The opera goes back to Carlo Gozzi and the Italian Commedia dell’Arte of the 18th century. This was a further development of the popular theater, which fought for the interest of the audience on the market square. In the Russian and then Soviet avant-garde, this became a montage of attractions that still characterizes Sergei Eisenstein’s films, for which Prokofiev composed the music after his return to the USSR. Psychology hardly plays a role. For “The Love of the Three Oranges” the shack and circus are more important than Sigmund Freud.

Of course, opera is a more expensive spectacle than the fair. And even a play in which the oddballs triumph over the demands of tragedy and comedy fans cannot break away from the habits of the genre. It speaks for Titov that it doesn’t get lost in his theory. He psychologizes to the right extent, namely so that the characters are more than puppets and – within the scope of what is possible here – behave towards each other in a comprehensible way. But he doesn’t subject them to any rigid concept.

This was initially to be feared when the prince was lying in his bed in the center of the stage and was the object of therapy. Set designer Wolfgang Menardi designed a wide but ultimately closed space in which the hospital room and the courtly public merge. But as soon as the search for the three oranges begins, freer playing areas emerge. Now it’s clearly not about internal processes, but about musical theater – with the emphasis on “theater”, especially since the art dispute and the plot intersect.

Thanks to Emma Ryott (costumes) and Fabio Antoci (lighting), you can see both the funny and the gruesome. The oversized cook (as bass: Taras Shtonda) combines both, as does the rat figure, which is more than human-sized. There was laughter in this premiere, which is a good sign.

The Saxon Staatskapelle under the direction of Erik Nielsen had an only halfway good evening. The tempos were appropriately tight, the gestures were clear; but the volume fluctuated between too subtle and quite loud. The sound – at least in the reviewer’s seat – was also very brass-heavy, and so what the strings were doing could sometimes only be guessed at. The sound balance between choir and orchestra was also at risk: especially in the prologue, the too numerous supporters of tragedy and comedy obscured the efforts in the orchestra pit.

In “The Love of the Three Oranges” there are not two or three really big parts, but rather a number of medium-sized roles. If the king still comes first in the list, this cites the old hierarchical rule of listing people in order of rank and not according to their importance within the plot. In this case it seems almost subversive. Georg Zeppenfeld convincingly plays the father who complains about his sick son, does not understand what is happening at his court and always does the wrong thing until almost the end. You can’t sing the weakling weakly, but you can convey lament and feeling where the ruler is missing.

Mauro Peter, as his son, has to shape the transition from illness to love-fixated adventure; The latter works better than the lawsuit because the play and direction leave more room for it. Without Truffaldino he would fail immediately. Fun-loving, averse to any kind of heroism, but saving through cunning when danger couldn’t be avoided: this servant figure, taken from the Commedia dell’Arte, is a rewarding role, and Aaron Pegram knows how to show the entire spectrum, from silliness to courage to greed .

In general, characters from the Commedia dell’Arte appear: Tilmann Rönnebeck plays the deep black devil Farfarello, and Georgina Fürstenberg is convincing as the scheming servant Smeraldina, while Alexandros Stavrakakis plays the powerful magician Chelio; the female opponents on the magic and court levels are less remembered.

In Dresden you can hear a German translation by Werner Hintze, which in some passages is more drastic than the version published by the music publisher Breitkopf and Härtel. It is impossible to judge which is more correct without knowledge of Russian. Hintze is closer to the fair. There’s no major blunder in the accents of the music and lyrics, but it doesn’t quite fit. You should probably sing Russian operas in Russian. Nevertheless, the production is worth visiting.

Next performances: December 11th, 15th and 18th

www.semperoper.de