Sergei Prokofiev's comic opera The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33 (1919) won a place in the repertoire only with great difficulty. First produced in 1921, the work was greeted with rather dismal reviews and an even worse public response. Prokofiev found a partial solution to this problem by extracting six numbers from the opera, revising them, and assembling them into a six-movement concert suite in 1924.

"The Ridiculous People," adapted from the opera's prologue, depicts the arguments between the various characters (represented by distinct instrumental ideas) and the ultimate subjugation of their ideas by the forceful Ridiculous People themselves. In "Scene from Hades," Prokofiev uses eerie instrumental effects to represent a card game played by Fata Morgana in Hell. The "March," made famous by dozens of arrangements (it was a staple of violinist Jascha Heifetz's recitals), finds the sick Prince being carried to a party contrived to make him smile. The movement's march rhythms are continually inflected by strident, "wrong-note" sonorities. The remainder of the suite is comprised of "Scherzo" (here reworked into an effective orchestral miniature), a romantic interlude ("The Prince and the Princess"), and "Flight," a comic romp in which the villains are finally routed.

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The Love for Three Oranges (suite), Op.33 bis (arr. piano) - 3.March

The Love for Three Oranges has generally been Prokofiev's most popular opera, though in the latter part of the twentieth century War and Peace (1942 - 1951) garnered as many performances and far more recordings, and The Fiery Angel (1919 - 1927) also gained wide currency. What has made the music of the Love for Three Oranges more familiar than his other operatic fare is the popular concert suite derived from it, Op. 33bis (1924) and this pair of piano pieces. The March has been transcribed for several different instruments and band ensembles, in fact, and was used as the theme for an immensely popular American radio show in the mid-twentieth century called "Your FBI in Peace and War."

Prokofiev fashioned extremely effective transcriptions of these two numbers from the opera, making them sound quite native to the keyboard genre. The March first appears in the opera just before Truffaldino attempts to make the melancholic Prince laugh. In this piano version, the rhythms are less springy, but the pungent dissonances have more color and bite, and the famous march tune manages to sound both suave and sassy. The Scherzo is heard in the opera at the outset of the Prince's search for the three oranges. This piano version is just as perky and nearly as colorful in capturing the fantasy of the orchestral rendition.

© Robert Cummings, Rovi