Program Note

First staged in Chicago in 1921, Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges was set to a satiric tale by the 18th-century Italian writer Carlo Gozzi. The plot, in an orange skin, concerns a Prince, the son of the King of Trifles, who, having been cured of melancholia by the unintentionally clumsy, thus side-splitting, antics of the witch Fata Morgana, is cursed by the offended creature: He will roam the earth searching for the three oranges with which she has caused him to be in love. (The March accompanies the Prince from his melancholic sickbed to the Court.) After considerable travel and travail, the Prince discovers three enormous oranges, each of which, when peeled, discloses a beautiful Princess inside. Upon emerging from their citrus sanctums, the first two ladies die instantly, but the third and most beautiful, Princess Ninetta, is saved, and she and the Prince live happily ever after.