1
Makiko Hirata
Orientalism in Love for Three Oranges
The original L’amore della Tre Melarance (Love for Three Oranges)
was a fairy tale every Venetian knew. Then, in 1761 Carlo
Gozzi (1720-1806) adapted it into a commedia dell’arte
(improvised Italian comedy with stock characters. fl. 15th-18th
C) play in 1761, which was then adapted by Sergei Prokofiev
(1891-1953) into an opera in 1919. Each time, the story came
to embody each writer’s time and viewpoints, including
Orientalism1.
Different scholars consider the great popularity that
Gozzi’s play attained, as well as Gozzi’s brief friendship
with Da Ponte, to have influenced the very similar plotline
in Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflőte (Magic Flute) which
takes place in ancient Egypt, leading one to wonder if the
unspecified fantasy land in Gozzi’s play could not have been
in the Orient as well. His following nine plays were to be
2
drawn from The Thousand and One Nights, including Turandot. In
addition, Venice has always had special ties to the Orient.
Prokofiev’s opera, L’amour des trois oranges (Love for Three
Oranges), premiered in Chicago in 1921 and came to be
regarded by many as Sergei Prokofiev’s most successful opera.
The libretto was drafted by the composer between his
departure from Russia and arrival in America, when he had a
two-month layover in Japan, waiting for a ship. Moreover, in
the summer of 1913, during his first trip abroad, he was in
Paris where Exoticism2, and particularly Japonisme, was
prevalent. Debussy, the leading proponent of these two
movements, visited Petrograd in November of 1913 and the two
composers met. In addition, Russia has had, as a geographical
and cultural margin of Europe, a close association with the
cultural Other, and the Orient.3 Given this background, this
paper will focus on the evidence of Orientalism in
Prokofiev’s Opera, Op. 33.
1. The Background
3
Sergei Prokofiev’s opera, L’amour des trois oranges (“Love for
Three Oranges” also performed in Russian as Lyubov’ k tryom
apel’sinam), was first conceived when he received a copy of the
satirical play, L’amore delle tre melarance by Carlo Gozzi, adapted
to Russian by an influential avant-garde theatrical director,
Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). Meyerhold, like Gozzi, saw in
the “slapstick comedy of masks an antidote to the heavy
melodrama and the petty naturalism.”4 He had hoped to produce
Prokofiev’s first opera, The Gambler, in Petrograd, although
it became impossible with the onset of the Russian Revolution
in 1917. Trusting the newly printed Russian adaptation, he
hoped that the 27-year-old composer would apply the same
“anti-opera” style contained in The Gambler to this commedia
dell’arte scenario.5
On May 7, 1918, Prokofiev started out on his journey by
train: Petrograd – Siberia – China, then a sea voyage to
Yokohama, Japan, arriving on June 1st. He was to stay in Japan
until August 2nd, when finally an appropriate ship was to set
4
sail toward America. By the time he arrived in San Francisco
three weeks later, he had drafted the libretto.6 Prokofiev
feared that an opera in Russian would not be acceptable to
American audiences. With his English being less than
adequate, he decided to write the libretto in French.7 In
January 1919, when the director of Chicago Opera, Cleofonte
Campanini, expressed an interest in The Gambler, Prokofiev
offered instead to compose the score for L’amour des trois
oranges.8 The commission allowed Prokofiev to focus on the
work, and he completed the opera on October 1st of the same
year. With the sudden death of Campanini two months before
the scheduled premiere, and some negotiation difficulties,
the premiere was delayed until Dec. 30, 1921. Chicago Opera
gave it its “most lavish production up to that time (Forty-
three thousand dollars per orange, one critic wrote).”9 The
composer himself was at the podium, Nina Pavlovna Koshets as
the Fata Morgana and Hector Dufranne as the Tchelio. However,
it was not received favorably. Even the Russian premiere in
Leningrad in 1926 met with mixed reviews. Prokofiev himself,
5
however, thought it “a success and the press gave it a good
deal of space. The comments of some reviewers were very
sensible,” though he continues by expressing his annoyance at
the fact that “others wanted to know whom I was laughing at:
the audience, Gozzi, the operatic form or those who had no
sense of humor. They found in the Oranges mockery, defiance,
the grotesque and what not; all I had been trying to do was
to write an amusing opera”.10 Today, many consider it much
more than “an amusing opera”. In Michael Pisani’s view, it
became “one of the first dramaturgically modern operas to
have been performed in either Europe or the Americas…[and]
one of the most important American operatic commissions in
the first half of the twentieth century.”11
2. The Spectators/Commentator in the Libretto
Gozzi wrote his Oranges for the famous Sacci Company12 to
revive the waning popularity of commedia dell’arte, and to show
up his archrival playwrights with their innovative styles:
Goldoni with his bourgeoisie realism and Chiari with his
6
sentimental comedy.13 The conflict is referred to in the
prologue by the comedian with a plea to the audience to give
this old form of comedy one more chance. There is another
brief scene in Act II, Scene 1 where Clarice, Leandro, and
Brighella discuss their respective preference in theatre:
tragedy, comedy, and commedia dell’arte. The adaptation by
Meyerhold had significantly expanded this aspect of Gozzi’s
play, giving this discussion to groups of “Greek Choruses”,
and in Prokofiev’s version, it became even more important.14
The “tragedians”, “comedians”, “lyricists”, “eccentrics” and
“empty heads” provide the temporal frame of the opera. They
open the opera with a five-minute prologue in which the
groups exchange heated arguments over what the opera should
be. During the unfolding of the opera after the Prologue,
they provide commentaries and interventions that mark and
break up the course of the action and music. Spatially, the
stage is surrounded by tiers of balconies from where these
“aesthetes” are to exclaim their comments on how the story
7
should unfold. They sometimes even descend from these
balconies to intercede in the on-going actions.
Pisani states that “Oranges is largely a satire on all
that is elevated: courtly life and operatic extravagance”.15
The opera is set in a kingdom where everyone dresses as a
playing card16. It is where the underground creatures -- good
sorcerer Tchélio and the evil witch Fata Morgana -- deal with
the fate of the aging King and terminally hypochondriac
Prince by playing cards (and the witch wins). The
commentators occupy the best seats in the house, having more
power over the course of the story than the characters
themselves seem to. During the period when he was composing
this work, Prokofiev himself, like these “aesthetes”, was an
outsider, a foreign traveler to Japan, and then America. What
did he think of the unfamiliar world he was observing and did
any of it make it into this opera, particularly his
experience in Japan?
3. Orientalism: Background
8
Love for Three Oranges is an opera that is open to a wide
variety of interpretations and productions for two reasons.
One concerns the improvisational nature of its original
format, commedia dell’arte.17 The other rests on the fact that
“Prokofiev did not spell out the ‘meanings’ in his opera; he
left such decisions to the directors, actors and audience…
[he] confirmed in his diary that the manner in which the
opera succeeded or failed had everything to do with how
director, designer, and actors realized the humor and satire,
without resorting to the bitter edge of sarcasm”.18 Therefore,
a quality that does not appear in the foreground of the
narrative, such as Orientalism, can be difficult to discern.
And to accuse a work of Orientalism is a serious charge:
Edward Said, an extremely influential cultural critic in his
pivotal work Orientalism (1978) defined the term Orientalism
as “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient –
dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing
views of it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in
short, a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
9
having authority over the Orient.”19 Nevertheless, there is
enough background and musical material to build a case for
Orientalism in this opera.
After Gozzi’s successful revival of commedia della’arte with
Oranges, he went on to write nine more fiabe (dramatized fairy
tales) in the next four years (1762-66), drawing mainly on
The Thousand and One Nights for the plots, including Turandot.20 He
was writing for Venetian audiences that considered Marco Polo
(1254-1324) to be their pride, and fantasized about the Far
East based on his accounts. Venetians had enjoyed a monopoly
over the trade routes to the Arabian lands for centuries that
also provided access to goods from China, though by Gozzi’s
time they had already lost it to other European powers.
Oranges does not specifically point to the Orient in its
narratives. However, in addition to these above mentioned
facts, the similarities between the second half of Oranges –
where the Prince goes through “trials and tribulations”21 to
find his love, cure his curse, and reach a happy wedding –
10
and Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflȍte (The Magic Flute)
are striking enough to make one wonder if Oranges could not
have taken place somewhere in the Orient, since Die Zauberflȍte
takes place in Ancient Egypt. Before Da Ponte moved to
Vienna, where he collaborated with Mozart on Le Nozze di Figaro
(The Marriage of Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte, he
lived in Venice where he developed “a brief friendship” with
Gozzi.22 Scholars speculate that Da Ponte might have told
“Mozart about the most popular form of theater in Venice at
the time, Gozzi’s fiabe…It was from the fantastical fairy tale
plays of Carlo Gozzi that Mozart and Schikaneder derived the
idea for Die Zauberflȍte”.23
Prokofiev was a descendent of Russian composers who
sought to establish their own unique voice, independent from
the European influence. One of the ways in which they
attempted this was by looking to the Orient. It was also “in
response to increased censorship during the years after the
assassination of liberal tsar Alexander II…that the
11
preference for fantastic, exotic plots over historical ones”
came to be.24 For examples, works like Balakirev’s Islamey –
Oriental Fantasy (1869), Rimsky-Korsokov’s Sheherazade (1888), and
Borodin’s Prince Igor (1874) immediately come to one’s mind.
The Russian fascination with the Orient also reflects its
“Eurasianism”– a Russian political movement in the early 20th
century, which posited that Russian civilization was a non-
European, Orthodox Christian one. Furthermore, in the summer
of 1913, Prokofiev had already visited France, where
Orientalism/Exoticism was permeating all art forms.25 He also
met Debussy later in the same year, when this leading
proponent of Orientalism and Japonisme visited Petrograd and
conducted some of his own orchestral works and performed his
own chamber pieces.26 Debussy praised Prokofiev’s own
performance of his Legend, Op. 12 and Etudes, Op. 2, but
Prokofiev thought of the French master’s music as “not
sufficiently meaty”.27 There is no evidence that Prokofiev
came to Japan with a particular interest in Orientalism or
Japonisme. In fact, had he not missed the ship to Valparaiso,
12
Chile, by three days, he would have gone straight on to
America, barely passing through Japan. However, according to
his journal entries, Prokofiev was impressed with Japan:
May 31: “…Having left the prison-like Russia, it is like a vacation to have come to a country with no war or revolutions, with fragrant flowers blooming…I did not think I would be attracted to this country, and honestly I was a little angry with the Japanese that wanted to occupy the eastern Siberia, but I must say that I have never seen a country this wonderful. Enchanting steep green mountains are sectioned into little squares and plowed with love…”28
During the two-month stay, he explored Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara,
Yokohama, Hakone and Osaka, met with various classical music
connoisseurs from Japan and abroad, visited the brothels and
strip clubs, played three concerts (to not-so full houses),
read Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Representation”,
and wrote short stories. It was also in Japan that he re-read
Meyerhold’s adaptation of Oranges, started reading the original
Italian version by Gozzi and sketched out the dynamics
between characters belonging to the underworld (the wizards
and witches) versus the real-world.29
13
4. Prokofiev’s Musical Orientalism
Ralph P. Locke defines musical Orientalism as “ the
dialects of musical exoticism within Western art music that
evoke the East or the orient; in a broader sense, the
attitude toward those same geo-cultural regions as expressed
in certain Western musical works, regardless of whether a
given work evokes the music of the region or not.”30 He gives
a list on musical features often used to evoke the musical
exoticism:
1. modes and harmonies different from the familiar major and minor (such as pentatonic and other gapped scales),
2. bare textures (unharmonized unisons or octaves, parallel4ths or 5ths, drones and static harmonies and – in pieces evoking the Indonesian gamelan – a texture consisting of rhythmically stratified layers),
3. distinctive repeated rhythmic or melodic patterns (sometimes deriving from dances of the ‘other’ country or group), and
4. unusual musical instruments (especially percussion) or performing techniques (e.g. pizzicato, double stops, vocal portamento).”31
Prokofiev wrote several works with Oriental references.
They are:
14
1. “Overture to Hebrew Themes” Op. 34 for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano
2. Symphonic Suite “Egyptian Nights” Op. 613. “Oriental Dance” Op. 97-6 in his Pieces from the Ballet
Cinderella for solo piano4. “Orientalia” (the same as above, orchestrated) Op. 109-5
from the Symphonic Suite, Cinderella (which also includes selections from Love for Three Oranges)
5. Indian Galop (1896) for Piano, Kazkah Popular Songs (5) for vl & pf (1927), Oriental Piece for Piano (1907) – all Woo., all lost.
The “Oriental” characteristics that are consistent to
these pieces coincide with Locke’s list of musical features
used to evoke musical Exoticism.
1. modal ambiguities, 2. Drone-like perfect intervals that often give a sense of
timelessness, 3. An odd number of repeated notes (see Ex. 2, Cinderella,
mm13-15, 17-18 and 23-25) and/or motivic short-note patterns (see Ex. 3, Hebrew [48] to end) – often in a duration that reminds one of minimalist music,
4. The use of percussion and/or staccato/pizzicato/col legno effects (see Ex. 4, Egyptian Night, P. 58)
For example, the first movement, “Night in Egypt”, from the
Symphonic Suite “Egyptian Nights”, Op. 61 (see Ex.1), is
supported by a movement-long tremolo in the strings and the
bass drum. The C is the most prominent note in this “chord”
15
played by the first violins, cello and bass, while the G and
D are divided between different registers of the second
violins and viola. Their only break from this C-D-G drone is
the three-measure-long lower neighbor chord of B, A, C#, E,
F# (which can be analyzed as an F# minor 7th chord with an
added B, but because B is prominent as a soprano and as an
audible lower neighbor, and because it has no harmonic
function, it does not sound like a typical “harmony”), only
to go back to the original C-D-G tremolo for five more
measures to the end of the movement. The static, minimalistic
dotted rhythms introduced by the flute also distort the
listener’s sense of time. In the third measure the solo flute
alternates between a dotted figure and 16th note figure twice,
creating a sense of pattern which is only to be betrayed two
measures later. The descending chromatic scale between
clarinets, bass clarinet, harp and cello pizzicato at measure
13 will resolve to what sounds briefly like a C triad (with
the added D), but it is not in the tonal context. For more
16
examples of Prokofiev’s Oriental qualities in these pieces,
please refer to examples 2, 3, and 4, in the Appendix.
5. Musical Orientalism in Love for Three Oranges
Listing operas written between 1851 and 1898 by French,
German and Italian composers as examples, Ralph P. Locke
summarizes the “paradigmatic plot for Orientalist operas” as
follows: “Young, tolerant, brave, possibly naïve, white-
European tenor-hero intrudes, at risks of disloyalty to his
own people and colonialist ethic, into mysterious, dark-
skinned, colonized territory represented by alluring dancing
girls and deeply affectionate, sensitive lyric soprano,
incurring wrath of brutal, intransigent tribal chieftain
(bass or bass-baritone) and blindly obedient chorus of male
savages.”32 Love for Three Oranges fits this mold, though not
as literally as Magic Flute does. The “white-European tenor-
hero” would be the Prince, who overcomes his fatal
hypochondria by managing to laugh at the evil witch Fata
Morgana in the middle of the opera. The humiliated witch
17
curses the prince with an obsession for the three oranges.
The prince abandons his aging father, along with the kingdom
and subjects he is to inherit from his father, to set out
immediately on a journey to seek out these three oranges,
accompanied by the jester, Trouffaldino (he is to the Prince,
Tamino’s Papageno and Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza). The
oranges are kept at the kitchen of a palace of the witch
Creonta, guarded by a giant female cook (bass – this would be
the “intransigent tribal chieftain” in Locke’s formula) with
a lethal ladle. The Prince and Trouffaldino rescue the three
oranges, each of which has a princess (the “alluring dancing
girls”) and find Princess Ninetta (the “deeply affectionate,
sensitive” soprano) in the last one, with whom the Prince
falls in love.
The singers in Oranges are divided into three levels in
its narrative as well as music: the “spectators”, the
“characters”, and the “manipulators from the underworld”. The
spectators are easily distinguishable from the rest because
18
they always sing in chorus, but to associate the characters
and the manipulators with audible musical characteristics is
a little trickier. Prokofiev seems to use the “Oriental”
musical characteristics in order to give the manipulators
more of an exotic aura. The tendencies to portray the
characters possessing supernatural powers as Oriental are
points made repeatedly by Locke33. The dark force of the
underworld, the evil witch Fata Morgana, gets the most
discernible Oriental musical materials among the characters
in the opera. Fata Morgana is the figure that is associated
with the Queen of the Night from Die Zauberflȍte. Gozzi’s
misogynistic world view and his portrayal of female
characters are retained in Prokofiev’s opera.34
The first time we hear the Oriental elements is in Act
I, scene II: the good sorcerer Tchelio and evil witch Fata
Morgana make their first appearances in the opera to play
three rounds of a card game. The outcome of the game
determines the fates of King and Prince, whom Leandro (the
19
prime minister), and Clarissa (King’s niece) are scheming to
overthrow. If Tchelio wins, King and Prince are safe, if not,
they are doomed. Throughout the game, neither Tchelio nor
Fata Morgana really sings, but only mimes and exclaims at the
dealing of each card. Only when Fata Morgana’s victory is
revealed, do we hear the musical orientalism, as well as them
“singing”, for the first time (see Ex. 5). Her laughter is
scored in descending figures of E-D flat-C-C, although in
some productions, the soprano sings more in sprechtsimme style,
an expressionist vocal technique between singing and
speaking. She laughs five times – an odd number, against
Tchelio cursing her on a repeated C with dotted rhythms, also
five times. The devils accompanying Fata Morgana sing her
name in alternation of third and fourth, five times as well.
It is a very oddly repetitive moment in the opera – things
stand still, and the audience is suspended wondering where
everything (not just the narrative but also the music) will
go from there.
20
The scene of Fata Morgana’s laughter foreshadows the
scene in which the terminally hypochondriac prince – whose
only cure is laughter – laughs for the first time. Comedians
have been summoned to make him laugh, to no avail, because
Fata Morgana’s presence has the power to counteract the
comedians’ efforts, and keep the Prince from laughing. But
when she is shoved by Trouffaldino and falls head over heels,
the Prince laughs (see Ex. 6). The beginning of this hesitant
laughter reminds one of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and
perhaps that was the composer’s intention. The scene may be
prophesizing the blooming of minimalism later in the century,
a movement that scholars such as Robert Fink often associate
with the philosophy of Zen. First, when the Prince begins to
laugh, the violins (gradually joined by the rest of the
strings one section at a time) play an eighth-note pattern
for 48 measures. Once the Prince has mastered his laugh, and
laughs in repeated diminished triads on C#, the entire string
section accompanies him with pizzicatos for 17 measures. Then
21
the crowd, characters as well as the spectators, laughs as a
chorus, again repetitively.
The ever-lasting repetitive laughter is interrupted when
Fata Morgana, humiliated, stands up to curse the Prince (see
Ex. 7). The scene opens with a big bang on the Chinese gong
and string tremolos on B-F#-C with an added A-flat in double
bass. The string chorale that follows reminds one of
Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (1899), Op. 4. When she begins to
deliver her curse (“through trials and tribulations…”) for
three measures before rehearsal number 221 (see Ex. 8), the
chromaticism and tonal ambiguity reaches its height.
Especially because the rest of her “aria” is very triadic
(against very chromatic accompanimental figures), this line
stands out. Then, she disappears with two bangs on the
Chinese gong.
The modal ambiguities associated with Fata Morgana are
noticeable elsewhere. Earlier in the opera, Leandro and
Clarissa – desperately scheming to keep Prince from laughing
22
in hopes of taking over the kingdom – sing Fata Morgana’s
name as if praying, wishing for her power to suppress the
Prince in his hypochondria (see Example 9). Their song
outlines a pentatonic scale F-G-Bb-C-Db (Db is only in the
accompaniment)35. In this pentatonic, parallel perfect-
interval passage, one is briefly transported in to the world
of Madame Butterfly (1904). There is another pentatonic
passage, not associated with Fata Morgana, but with Princes
Ninetta from one of the three oranges. After she has
introduced herself, and the Prince has declared his love to
her, she tells him that she has always waited for him (see
Ex. 11). Her line, with the addition of flutes and clarinets
in high registers in parallel-fifth motion, outlines the
pentatonic scale of G-A-B-D-E. Though her later lines also
suggest pentatonic scales, it is never this distinct. Why the
use of pentatonic here? Is it because of the association
between passivity, innocence, fragility (she is dying of
thirst, only to be rescued by the intervention of the
23
“eccentrics” bringing a bucket of water down to the stage)
and the Orient? Is it to mock cio-cio san?
Tchelio, the good sorcerer, has his Oriental moment as
well, though it is curious that one of the few places he gets
it is when he is calling on Farfarello, the devil, to find
out Fata Morgana’s scheme against the Prince. At the
beginning of Act III Scene I, the sorcerer calls on
Farfarello 20 times in total. At the end he repeats
“Farfarello” so quickly that it reminds one of Rossini’s
“Figaro”. The beginning of this act is also marked by an
eerie tremolo drone. As the tempo picks up towards
Farfarello’s appearance, strings begin to switch gradually
from tremolo to pizzicatos to col legno to eventually
accelerating 16 notes. This is also a harmonically ambiguous
place in the opera, with many voices moving in parallel
motion. Tonal centers – if there is one clearly at any point
– shift with every phrase.
6. Conclusions
24
The Orientalism and/or Exoticism in Prokofiev’s music
may not be as prevalent as in some of the other composers of
his time, but his use of it in Love for Three Oranges seems to be
consistent and purposeful. And the use of the term
Orientalism with its negative connotation associated with
cultural imperialism seems to be perfectly appropriate.
Prokofiev never missed a day of journal entry during his stay
in Japan, but the evidence of his actively seeking out
Japanese music, theatre, or any form of traditional culture
cannot be found. People mentioned in his journal are mostly
Russians and other Europeans living in Japan, and the
majority of the Japanese mentioned are “professional”
females. One of the few Japanese males he mentioned by name
is Duke Yorisada Tokugawa, a musicologist. Prokofiev’s
description of him is “very European, attractive, ingenuous –
I felt nothing Oriental about him”.36 He played concerts in
Japan after a two-month-and-a-half of no practicing, but
claims the Japanese audience unworthy of such effort37.
Surprised by their acceptance of his rather dissonant pieces
25
(among other pieces, he played his own Visions Fugitives, and the
last movement of his fourth sonata), he says “they are so
used to incoherent sounds, that I suspect they cannot hear
the difference between our consonances and dissonance”.38
Though he did admire the Japanese landscapes, geishas, the old
cities of Kyoto and Nara, the disrespect he expresses toward
many of the other aspects of the country rules out the
possibility that he would attempt to incorporate some kind of
Japaonisme in his music. This is also evident in the fact
that, though many of his eleven short stories were at least
drafted, or started in Japan, there is no mention of Japan,
or anything remotely relatable to Japan in any of them.
Prokofiev might have claimed, if asked, that Love for Three
Oranges would have come out the same had he written it in
Russia. But the fact remains that many of the musical
gestures he used to portray the “Other” in the opera were
used in his pieces that portrayed the Orient, and that he was
exposed to the Orient itself and Orientalism around this
time.
1 Locke points out how since Edward Said’s pivotal work Orientalism (1978), “’Orientalism’ has become a term that can refer to any world population – including Caribbean and blond Scandinavian-Americans – that differs from whatever a work of art constructs as its mainstream European or white-American persona or viewpoint. And, with rare exceptions, it accuses the West of intolerance (condescension, etc.) toward whatever ethnic Other is in question” See Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 37. I have chosen this term,being fully aware of its negative connotations. However, I also agree with Locke’s following proposal: “Cultural Imperialism – or any other ideology or political trend that a given individual today finds repellent – can be condemned in the realm of politics but, I would propose, can and should be allowed to find expression in art, especially when the work in questions isworthy enough…the ‘unbeautiful’ ideological implications in (a masterpiece – he uses Les noces as an example) are part of what led (the creator – in theexample, Stravinsky) to use certain style features in the work. It is enriching for us to know more about what the creator and his contemporarieswould have read into those style features, and to ponder possibly analogousimplications in other repertoires, including ones of our own day” 38-40.
2 “Orientalism” has become for some music critics, scholars – just as for literary critics and such – a curse word, a sharply disapproving substitutefor a word – “exotic” – that had so long been used in a (now-considered-naïve?) spirit of delighted endorsement.” ibid, 38.
3This can be seen in works such as Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880) and Prince Igor (1890) or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade (1888). Locke proposes that “nationalism/folklorism/vernacularism” and “exoticism” display certain inherent similarities, and therefore, achieve similar musical effects. ibid, 27-29.
4 Richard Taruskin. "Love for Three Oranges, The." The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 26, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.rice.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/O902857.
5 Meyerhold had already been experimenting with the commedia characters. According to Michael Pisani, “His production in 1906 of Alexander Blok’s symbolist drama The Fairground Boothwith, with its Pierrot and Harlequin, may have, as one critic wrote, ‘launched the “Petrushka era” in Russian culture’ (Virginia Bennett, “Russian Pagliacci: Symbols of Profane Love in ThePuppet Show,” in Drama and Symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 141-78) …In 1913, Meyerhold suggested Love for Three Oranges to Richard
Strauss as an opera subject.” Strauss was already working on his own commedia project, Ariadne auf Naxos, and declined. See Pisani, “’A Kapustnik’ in the American Opera House: Modernism and Prokofiev’s ‘Love for Three Oranges’” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Winter, 1997): 498.
6 Taruskin’s article in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera states “By the time Prokofiev docked in San Francisco he had a draft libretto in hand”. However, in his autobiography (1941) Prokofiev himself wrote “during the long journey I had even sketched a plan of sorts in my mind”. Prokofiev, “Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings,” 265.
7 “Prokofiev may have conceived parts of the libretto in Russian, but, purportedly with the assistance of the soprano Vera Janacopolus, he translated them into singable French…He may have also been fashioning the Russian simultaneously with an eye to performances back home” Pisani, 511.
8 Prokofiev had the piano score with him, but the orchestral score was in revolutionary Petrograd, the retrieval of which would have been extremely difficult. See Prokofiev’s “Autobiography” in Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings,265.
9 Pisani, “A Kapustnik” in the American Opera House, 490.
10 Prokofiev, Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings, 281.
11 Pisani, “A Kapustnik” in the American Opera House , 489.
12 “…there just happened to be a highly accomplished commedia dell’arte troup working in Venice at the time, the famous Sacchi company…they had been performing in Lisbon, Portugal, when the terrible earthquake of November 1, 1755 occurred, killing around 40,000 people. Although all the members of the Sacchi troupe survived, they knew they could not continue tomake a living in Lisbon, given the circumstances, so they returned to Venice, leased a theater (the San Samuele), and worked to attract a loyal audience. But they were not having much success. See John Louis DiGaetani, A life in the 18th Century Venetian Theatre, and Afterlife in Opera (London: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2000), 107
13 “since Goldoni obstinately refers to his crowded house as a proof of the value of his theatrical compositions, I one day impenitently expressed the opinion that crowded houses were no demonstration that the shows were good and that I could guarantee to draw still larger crowds than did he with hisrubbish by working into dramatic from the fiary-tale of The Love of the Three Pomegranates which grannies narrate to their grandchildren” – Gozzi quoted inPisani “A Kapustnik” in the American Opera House, 497.
14 Taruskin, Love for Three Oranges, The.
15 Pisani, “A Kapustnik” in the American Opera House, 509.
16 This was from Gozzi’s original. It “had the immediate effect of parodyingVenice’s famous obsession with gambling…for much of the 18th century, Venicewas the only city in Europe that had legalized gambling”. See DiGaetani, Carlo Gozzi: A Life in the 18th Century Venetian Theater, an Afterlife in Opera, 110.
17 “Gozzi depended largely on the legendary improvisational abilities of thewonderful actors in the Sacci troupe.”See John Louis DiGaetani Carlo Gozzi : Translations of The Love of Three Oragnes, Turandot, and The Snake Lady with a Bio-Critical Introduction (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1988) , 10.
18 Pisani, “A Kapustnik” in the American Opera House, 500.
19 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 3-4, 119-120.
20 Barbara Reynolds. "Gozzi, Carlo." The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 27, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.rice.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/O901955.
21 Fata Morgana, “You will be tormented by the love for three oranges. Through trial and tribulations, by night and by day you shall roam and wonder in search of the three oranges” Act II, Scene II, rehearsal number [220]
22 DiGaetani, Carlo Gozzi: A life in the 18th Century Venetian Theatre, and Afterlife in Opera, 200.
23 ibid
24 Locke, Musical Exoticism, 226
25 Dorothea Redepenning. "Prokofiev, Sergey." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 27, 2013,http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.rice.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/22402.
26 Prokofiev mentions having heard Debussy conduct La Mer and Nocturne. See Motoo Otaguro. “Purokofiev to Kataru (Conversing with Prokofiev)”, Ongaku to Bungaku (Music and Literature) 8 (1918): 7.
27 Israle V. Nestyev, Prokofiev, trans. Florence Jonas (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1960), 82.
28 Sergei Prokofiev. Purokofiev Tanpen-shu. Trans. Sabrina Eleonora and Nahoko Toyota (Tokyo: Gunzo-sha, 2010), 174-5.
…(今 今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今 今今今今今今今今今 今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今 今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今、、、、?...今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今、。、今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今今…”。、English translation by Hirata
29 Journal entry dated June 16 in Prokofiev, Purokofiev Tanpenshu, 187.
30 Ralph P. Locke. "Orientalism." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed July 5, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.rice.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/40604
31 For a fuller typology of style aspects that have been used in exotic portrayals, see Locke, Musical Exoticism, 2009, Fig. 3.1, pp. 51–4”. Quoted from Ralph P. Locke. "Exoticism." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed July 5, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.rice.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/45644
32 Ralph P. Locke, “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saȅns’s ‘Samsonet Dalila’” Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Nov. 1991): 262-3
33 See Locke, Musical Exoticism, 196 - Chapter 8 “Impreialism and ‘the Exotic Orient’”, section “Rituals, priests and crowds”
34 DiGaetani identifies his misogynistic views as something that is attributable to his difficult relationship with his mother. “Carlo’s memoirs and his plays contain…loving fathers set against neurotic and monstrous mothers, Turandot and Fata Morgana being only the most famous examples. Perhaps because of his difficult relationship with his mother, Carlo Gozzi’s own character early began to display a streak of misogyny, and that taint persisted in many of his writings.” See DiGaetani, Carlo Gozzi:a Life… 16-17
35 For a discussion of pentatonic scale being associated with Oriental female characters, See Locke Musical Exoticism, 188. “Fragile Women, Fatal Women, and the Pentatonic” in Chapter 8 “Imperliaism and ‘the Exotic Orient’”
36 Prokofiev, Purokofiev Tanpenshu, Journal entry dated July 12, 199.37
Ibid, entry dated June 28, 192.38
Ibid, entry dated July 6, 196.
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