No libretto is safe from politically correct buffoons

Knickers in Philadelphia were missing. AWOL. Not a shred. Potential disaster. In Sergei Prokofiev’s 1918 opera, The Love for Three Oranges, knickers are essential, the fulcrum against which the lever of the plot is applied. No knickers, no reason for the hypochondriac Prince to laugh. So, no reason for him to be cursed by the witch, Fata Morgana, for laughing. No curse, no falling in love with three oranges (that’s the curse). No plot, no opera. May as well head back to Manhattan.

Here’s the point of the knickers. The King of Clubs has a hypochondriac son, The Prince, who can be cured of the glooms, only if made to laugh. Charged with the task of making him laugh is the jester, Truffaldino, who is… well, failing would be too kind a word.

But it’s not his fault! The wicked witch, Fata Morgana, along with her sidekick Smeraldina, has been tasked with preventing him laughing by the evil Princess Clarissa, who, along with the king’s slimy prime minister, Leander, who she intends to marry, wants to inherit the kingdom. And she will, but only if The Prince doesn’t laugh, cheer up and be fit to accede to the throne. While Fata Morgana looms, mysteriously clad in black, in the background of Truffaldino’s revels, The Prince cannot laugh.

In the original libretto what happens next is clear beyond possible misinterpretation. Truffaldino spots Fata Morgana, grabs her, and in the ensuing tussle she falls over, skirts elevating just sufficiently – it’s all quite demure – for The Prince to glimpse her knickers – at which, yup, he laughs.

“That’s funny. Ha! ….. Ha! Ha! …. Hoho! Haha! …. Ho! Haha! Hoho! Hohohohohhahahoao!”. The Prince stutters back from the abyss of perma-hypochondria more like an ancient Fordson tractor than first in line for the throne. But, he’s back.

Fata Morgana is furious. She curses him, as one does, to love three oranges – and so by the end of Act 2, Scene 2 the action has started.

But, what’s this I see? Fata Morgana has merely toppled over. Her state of déshabillé is incomplete. Au contraire, she is habillé. I wouldn’t laugh at that, would you? And we are not hypochondriac princes in hospital beds with wires coming out of a colander delivering electroconvulsive therapy to our yet to be crowned noggins. Not a chance of him even raising a titter.

Had Prokofiev’s simple, but essential, operatic artifice – comically and obviously hammed up in every other production of Oranges I have come across – merely been overlooked? Muffed?

The answer came in a post-performance Q and A when an oleaginous, drawly voice from the audience commented: “And I want to congratulate the whole cast and production team for bringing the performance up to the standards of political acceptability we all expect today”. Got her! The knicker twister revealed. The production team had been nobbled. She went on: “I’m pleased to report that no oranges were harmed, even squeezed, in the course of this production”. Sorry, I made that bit up.

Where will this censorship by self-appointed, righteous, politically correct, buffoons end? No libretto is safe – and I’m appalled the Opera Philadelphia Festival authorities failed to make a determined stand for knickers.

But, “Knickers aside”, as Mme de Maintenon was apt to say to Louis XIV, “wasn’t the performance merveilleux?” In Philadelphia it was. Based on a production which saw the light of day in Florence, the staging, acting and characters all held true to Prokofiev’s original 1918 version. Too many of today’s productions try to instil meaning into this operatic riot.

Oranges was commissioned in Chicago, while Prokofiev was performing in the US, avoiding troubles in turbulent homeland Russia. He was clearly determined not to be outdone by Dada, Dali, Ernst and Magrite, then storming the art world with surrealism. Oranges is a surrealist opera equivalent, almost dreamlike in its psychological allusions, chaotic and very, very funny. If it has any message at all – and it probably hasn’t – it would be an attack on hubris.

Most of all it’s a romp, which works only if taken at its lunatic face value. It is based on the sixteenth century Italian, Giambattista Basile’s fairly-tale of the same name. He also wrote the first known versions of Cinderella and Rapunzel.

The year before, Prokofiev had completed The Gambler, a deep and disturbing analysis of human compulsion in the shadow of the Russian Revolution. There is an excellent production of The Gambler from the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, on Euro Arts Channel playing currently. Having thought it politic to quit his revolutionary homeland for a while, perhaps Oranges was Prokofiev’s idea of light relief.

The opera is a fairground ride in the Commedia dell’arte tradition and the action needs pace and precision to keep the audience overwhelmed by the sequence of increasingly absurd events unfolding on stage. Director, Alessandro Talevi, and Action Designer, Ran Arthur Braun, never missed a trick, that is, apart from the “K” word again.

Barry Banks, the English bel canto tenor, who played Truffaldino, mentioned during the post-performance Q and A that the Second Act scene in which Prince Hypochondria is whirled around in a bed, as the jester and a coterie of supporting medics remove his pills, chant litanies of ghastly symptoms and apply electrodes to his skull, took fully twelve hours of painstaking rehearsal. That was for seven minutes of onstage action.

Banks gets about a bit, performing internationally at the top houses in difficult roles requiring his clarity of delivery and superb acting ability. He was a fine Truffaldino.

The opening scene is set in a prologue, being a chaotic debate between four warring factions of theatre fans. What sort of play do they want to see? Tragedy, comedy, romance or farce? A fifth group of spectators, “The Eccentrics” intervenes and announces the play, “The Love for Three Oranges”.

Let me reprise that paragraph, bring it up to date a bit. The scene is set amidst a chaotic debate between four warring factions of politicians. What sort of Brexit do they want to see? Soft Brexit, No Deal Brexit, Theresa Deal Brexit, or, a second referendum Truffaldino-Corbyn, “Maybe I won’t support it anyway” Brexity thing. A fifth group, “The Borisentrics”, intervenes in Manchester and announces the play, “The Love for Getting Brexit Done”.

I wasn’t in Philadelphia at all. I was in the British House of Commons. Maybe good old Sergei was psychic.

Other major roles: The King of Clubs was played by Scott Connor, a bass from Kansas, also sporting an international career. His laconic delivery was perfectly suited for the role of the put-upon father.

Fata Morgana – the hiss-boo witch – was Wendy Bryn Harmer, a Californian dramatic soprano, also boasting a comprehensive CV and drawing heavily on her drama skills. She was able to pull off a tremendous trick – looming menacingly, while not moving a muscle. She can sing imperiously – and did.

For Jonathan Johnson, The Prince, a young American tenor, this was his operatic debut. He seemed an old familiar, pulling off a difficult role with ease and with a supple voice, operating well within its comfort zone. I would love to hear him in a more testing work.

Back to the action. Post curse, a demon, Farfarello, played by Ben Wager, a graduate from The Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, blows the Prince and Truffaldino to the hiding place of the three oranges, the castle of Creonta, a giant sorceress and cook, wielding an enormous six foot ladle, which she plies with skill and fatal vigour against anyone daring to enter her kitchen.

The journey to and from Creonta’s castle was staged as a cross America roller-coaster flight, against the backdrop of a moving map. It was panto perfecto. No plane, just the Prince, Truffaldino and a pilot, kitted out in ancient flying leathers, helmet and goggles, simulating the ups, downs and turns of a turbulent passage.

Cloud bearing extras ran past, requiring the trio to swerve in unison, perfectly in time with the swooping score. There was a goose strike, (no geese were harmed in the performing of this opera), causing feathers to erupt from the back of the fliers’ jackets. This was “Raiders of the Lost Oranges”; childish; self-indulgent; over the top; and triumphantly hilarious.

Creonta was played by Zachary James, an American Bass, who played Lurch in the Broadway production of The Addams Family. A six-foot five-inch female cook with burly frame, five o’clock shadow and a wildly swinging ladle is a daunting prospect, but she is distracted by an entrancing ribbon given to Truffaldino by Chelio (Brent Michael Smith, an American bass), a magician who has been robbed of his powers by Fata Morgana, when he loses a card game in Act I. The Prince seizes the opportunity to nick the oranges, behind Creonta’s back.

The oranges – normal size in the kitchen – grow to enormous dimensions as they are towed about the desert by The Prince and Truffaldino. The oranges must be opened near water and when The Prince falls asleep, Truffaldino opens an orange to quench his thirst, only to reveal a beautiful Princess who, deprived of water, promptly sings a bit and dies.

Same happens when the second orange is opened. Bugger! Truffaldino runs off in terror, The Prince wakes up, finding the Princess Ninetta in the third orange, with whom he instantly falls in love. She gets the pip, because she’s thirsty – and also about to snuff it.

Here’s where surrealism reaches its apogee. The Eccentrics and the other factions have been observing the action from the wings, highly visible and responding physically to every twist and turn. The Eccentrics now intervene. The “fourth wall”, the imaginary boundary between stage and audience (the Eccentrics), is broken and they shove a pitcher of water onstage – psst! pssting!! – to The Prince who at last spots it and refreshes Ninetta.

“Breaking the fourth wall” is a relatively common theatrical device. Shakespeare broke it frequently, with soliloquies directed straight to the audience. Same with many arias in opera. But breaking it onstage is unusual. I suppose that means we, the real audience, were behind a fifth wall. Gawd, it’s getting complicated.

The Prince has gone to find Ninetta decent clothes in which to meet dad, The King of Clubs, and his court. Meantime Fata Morgana turns Ninetta into a rat and replaces her with her sidekick, Smeraldina.

Prince returns. Shock at discovering Smeraldina. King insists that a Royal promise is a promise. Wedding to go ahead regardless. Chelio confronts Fata Morgana. The fourth wall is breached again and The Eccentrics trap her, allowing Chelio to save the day. The wedding is disrupted as Ninetta (remember she’s a rat) occupies the princess’ throne. Chelio seizes his chance, turning her back to human form.

The dastardly plot is revealed. The King of Clubs, furious – well, wouldn’t you be if your prospective daughter in law had been turned into a rat, and just after she had been released from an orange, too?  – sentences Smeraldina, Clarissa and Leander to death.

Fata Morgana reappears, rescues the traitors and spirits them away to her subterranean kingdom. This act of lès majesté is met merely with a collective shrug and the wedding celebrations begin. Huzzah!

Opera Philadelphia deserve congratulation for mounting this work, in honour of their longstanding conductor, Corrado Rovaris, on whose bucket list it has featured for years. He attacked the score with vigour. The iconic “March”, which features for only a couple of minutes and is best remembered in the US for fronting the CBS radio series The FBI in Peace and War, broadcast between 1944 and 1958, was sharp and compelling. Throughout there was no let-up in the pace and all elements of the orchestration were beautifully articulated. Maestro Rovaris was clearly enjoying himself.

During the post opera Q and A the cast told us that for the dress rehearsal an audience of school children had been recruited. They loved it, laughed and cheered the performance to the echo. I can’t think of a better way to grab the attention of the next generation of opera fans.

And that, perhaps, is how we should view The Love for Three oranges, too. There is a time for viewing the world through the eyes of a child.