Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev

In 1921, Sergei Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges--one of the earliest, most famous examples of modernist opera--premiered in Chicago. Prokofiev’s source was a 1913 theatrical divertissement by Vsevolod Meyerhold, who, in turn, took inspiration from Carlo Gozzi’s 1761 commedia dell’arte-infused theatrical fairy tale. Only by examining these whimsical, provocative works together can we understand the full significance of their intertwined lineage.

With contributions from 17 distinguished scholars in theater, art history, Italian, Slavic studies, and musicology, Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev illuminates the historical development of Modernism in the arts, the ways in which commedia dell’arte’s self-referential and improvisatory elementshave inspired theater and music innovations, and how polemical playfulness informs creation.

A resource for scholars and theater lovers alike, this collection of essays, paired with new translations of Love for Three Oranges, charts the transformations and transpositions that this fantastical tale underwent to provoke theatrical revolutions that still reverberate today.

Dassia N. Posner (PhD, Tufts University) is Associate Professor of Theatre and Slavic Languages and Literatures and Director of Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Theatre and Drama at Tufts University. She also is Vice President for Awards of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She is author of The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde and editor (with Claudia Orenstein and John Bell) of The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. Her monograph was on the 2019 shortlist for the Prague Quadrennial Best Scenography and Performance Design Publication Award and was a finalist in 2016 for the TLA Freedley Memorial Award. Kevin Bartig (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology and Chair of the Musicology Area at Michigan State University. He is author of Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky and Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film. The American Musicological Society awarded his first book an AMS Pays 75 Publication Award in 2012.