[opera] The Love for Three Oranges, at the Academy of Music
This opera was SO weird. I really liked it!
New for the 2019-2020 season, they’ve changed the opera start time from 2:30 to 2:00. After our disappointing experience with Lucia di Lammermoor last year, Mom and I had honestly been planning on canceling our subscription and maybe switching back to the ballet, because the late start time always meant we were leaving before the opera was over to catch our train, missing the ending and running for the train and overall having an unpleasantly harried experience. But they moved the start time earlier! That little half-hour is (for the most part and depending on the specific opera) enough for us to stay till the end and still make our way to the train without having to rush. We decided to give it a try for another season.
The Love for Three Oranges was our first opera of the 2019-2020 season, part of the fall opera festival. We’d never seen this one before, and apparently it’s rarely staged in the US - this was its debut with Opera Philadelphia. Prokofiev wrote this opera while seeking asylum in the US after fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1918, and the director interpreted the opera to include an underlying theme of finding new life and freedom in the West. But mostly, there’s a whiny hypochondriac prince who’s fated to fall in love with some oranges, which when opened hatch out extremely thirsty princesses. Opera always feels sort of nonsensical anyway - I always feel there’s this sense that the characters are doing things that no actual person in their right mind would do if placed into that situation - so it was actually refreshing to watch an opera where the story genuinely isn’t supposed to make a ton of sense. I suppose if I’d been cursed by an evil goddess to fall in love with fruit, the most sensible thing to do would in fact be to rouse myself from my malaise and go steal ‘em from a giant’s chef.
My favorite part was probably the chorus or "Eccentrics": the way they invaded every scene; the groups of theatre fans arguing over whether comedy, tragedy, romance, or farce is better, and their demands for how the show turn out; the way the Eccentrics hung out onstage and watched the action; the way they were able to actually intrude into the action, breaking the fourth wall, to save the third princess by providing a waterskin. Their presence was so creative and unexpected, it was really entertaining. I also super-loved little things like the set design for the way the oranges opened, and the staging of the plane flying across the US. Overall this opera was really, really funny and felt really fresh and light and fun. (And, with a run time of two hours six minutes, we were done shortly after 4:00 and able to take our time walking to the train - a much, much more enjoyable experience!)
New for the 2019-2020 season, they’ve changed the opera start time from 2:30 to 2:00. After our disappointing experience with Lucia di Lammermoor last year, Mom and I had honestly been planning on canceling our subscription and maybe switching back to the ballet, because the late start time always meant we were leaving before the opera was over to catch our train, missing the ending and running for the train and overall having an unpleasantly harried experience. But they moved the start time earlier! That little half-hour is (for the most part and depending on the specific opera) enough for us to stay till the end and still make our way to the train without having to rush. We decided to give it a try for another season.
The Love for Three Oranges was our first opera of the 2019-2020 season, part of the fall opera festival. We’d never seen this one before, and apparently it’s rarely staged in the US - this was its debut with Opera Philadelphia. Prokofiev wrote this opera while seeking asylum in the US after fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1918, and the director interpreted the opera to include an underlying theme of finding new life and freedom in the West. But mostly, there’s a whiny hypochondriac prince who’s fated to fall in love with some oranges, which when opened hatch out extremely thirsty princesses. Opera always feels sort of nonsensical anyway - I always feel there’s this sense that the characters are doing things that no actual person in their right mind would do if placed into that situation - so it was actually refreshing to watch an opera where the story genuinely isn’t supposed to make a ton of sense. I suppose if I’d been cursed by an evil goddess to fall in love with fruit, the most sensible thing to do would in fact be to rouse myself from my malaise and go steal ‘em from a giant’s chef.
My favorite part was probably the chorus or "Eccentrics": the way they invaded every scene; the groups of theatre fans arguing over whether comedy, tragedy, romance, or farce is better, and their demands for how the show turn out; the way the Eccentrics hung out onstage and watched the action; the way they were able to actually intrude into the action, breaking the fourth wall, to save the third princess by providing a waterskin. Their presence was so creative and unexpected, it was really entertaining. I also super-loved little things like the set design for the way the oranges opened, and the staging of the plane flying across the US. Overall this opera was really, really funny and felt really fresh and light and fun. (And, with a run time of two hours six minutes, we were done shortly after 4:00 and able to take our time walking to the train - a much, much more enjoyable experience!)