During the intermission I receive a text from a friend in the theater asking, “Is this good? Am I missing something?”
I reply that there is always something to love in opera and to search out that element whether it is a sound from the orchestra, invention on the set, the beauty of a voice, or the pattern on a costume. There is always something to love.
What makes a better story, comedy or a tragedy? That is the premise and beginning of the fun for this opera.
I love the title, perhaps my favorite in all of opera.
So what is A Love of Three Oranges all about? It begins with two opposing chorus’s demanding either a tragedy or a comedy. The prince has hypochondria and can’t be a good heir unless he can laugh and get better. Clarissa and leander want to kill the prince ‘poison or just shoot him.’ And they play bad poetry and sasd stories to him to keep him sick and die. At a party Fata Morgana falls and that makes the Prince laugh so she puts a curse on him to fall in love with three oranges that he goes on a journey to find. They retrieve the oranges from the cook and as they escape his friend Chelio opens up two oranges that hold two princesses inside who die of thirst. When the third orange intervenes the audience that supports comedy hand the prince a bucket of water. When they return the King still wants the Prince to marry Smeraldina who Fata Morgana has turned into a rat. The audience again intervenes trapping Morgana and then Chelio returns Ninetta to human. The king sentences all the people who plotted against the prince to death, but Morgana enters and rescues them (maybe for the sequel). Comedy wins and the Prince and Princess get married.
Performed in English not the original French, highschoolish set pieces, orchestra and singers never seemed to come together
Notes on the production
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Composer……………………………….…Sergei Prokofiev
The Prince……………………………..… Jonathan Johnson
Fata Morgana……………………………Wendy Bryn Harmer
King of clubs……………………………. Scott Conner
Princess Clarissa…………………….. Alissa Anderson
Leander………………………………..….. Zachary Altman
Ninetta…………………………………..… Tiffany Townsend
The cook………………………………….Zachary James
Master of Ceremonies………..…..Corey Don Bonar
Conductor…………………………….… Corrado Rovaris
Philadelphia Opera
9/20/19