Why are the operas by one of the 20th century’s most tuneful composers so short of tunes?
It shouldn’t be a hard sell. Take Prokofiev, one of the most popular and tuneful composers of the 20th century, one of the most compelling Russian writers in history (Dostoevsky) and a novella that will never go out of fashion — a portrait of a society drunk on the pursuit of easy cash — and you have a perennial operatic hit. Not so. The performance history of The Gambler says it all. Although composed by Prokofiev in 1917, it reached these shores only in 1962 (performed in Serbo-Croat), and it had to wait another 20 years for English National Opera to have a crack at it. Its Russian premiere was in 1963. In 2007 it received a low-key staging at the Grange Park festival. Next week, the Royal Opera House turns its attentions to the piece, hoping to change the chequered history that has greeted this and the whole of Prokofiev’s operatic ouevre. Until about ten years ago you might have been forgiven for not knowing that Prokofiev had written eight major operas. Even those that have been g
