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Update, Nov. 30, 2022: Three Loves for Three Oranges, has won a major award: the American Society for Theatre Research Translation Prize. It was also a Runner Up for the Theatre & Performance Research Association Edited Collection Prize and received Honorable Mention for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Excellence in Editing Award. The book was partially funded with a HARP grant.

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Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Musicology Area Kevin Bartig is an expert in Russian and Soviet music, particularly that of famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. So, when the opportunity arrived to examine one of Prokofiev’s most beloved operas and its unique literary and theatrical sources, Bartig did not hesitate.

The opera, Love for Three Oranges, tells the humorous tale of a hypochondriac, fairy-tale prince who is cursed to pursue three magical oranges. But when this comical work premiered in Chicago in 1921, it was hailed as an “ultramodern” attack on traditional opera and has since been considered one of the earliest examples of modernism in the genre. Prokofiev’s source was a 1913 theatrical divertissement by the Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who himself had taken inspiration from a 1761 work of improvisatory theater by Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi.

Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev, published by Indiana University Press, examines the intertwined histories of Gozzi’s, Meyerhold’s, and Prokofiev’s works. The book features essays by seventeen distinguished scholars along with new translations of the three theatrical works.

According to Bartig, who edited the book with theater historian Dassia Posner and contributed several of its chapters, the volume began “as a way to celebrate the centenary of Prokofiev’s opera and grew to a wide-ranging exploration of two centuries of theatre and opera history that culminated in 1921 with the premiere of Love for Three Oranges.”
 

Renowned historian and author of Cursed Questions: On Music and Its Social Practices Richard Taruskin reviews the book and states, “this is one symposium that really is a feast: three sumptuous courses, served afresh and described with gusto, their individual flavors matched with their ingredients and their complex interrelationships clarified. Kudos to all the chefs and mavens.”

Three Loves for Three Oranges approaches Gozzi’s, Meyerhold’s, and Prokofiev’s oranges works from an interdisciplinary perspective and brings together contributors from theater history, art history, Italian studies, Slavic studies, and musicology. By examining these provocative works together, Bartig and his collaborators shed light on the full significance of the lineages of these works and their place in theater and opera history. As Bartig notes, “the volume is designed to appeal to scholars and opera lovers alike and explores historical developments in theater and opera that still reverberate today.”