The Love for the Three Oranges

The opera cannot begin. For even before the curtain rises, the audience begins to discuss loudly what it actually wants to see: a tragedy? A comedy? Something romantic, or perhaps a grand drama? What can and should musical theatre offer its audience? Without further ado, they try their hand at an improvised fairy tale in which a prince, overcome by a strange melancholy, must learn to laugh again. When he finally bursts out laughing, an evil fairy curses him. Good wizards, evil magicians, fools, schemers, princes and princesses – and, last but not least, the three oranges that give the work its title – whirl through a plot that takes one twist after another, always just managing to stay on course. 

Prokofiev’s brightly coloured music boldly casts aside the operatic pathos of the 19th century and whisks us away into a grotesque fairy tale that elevates the world to theatre and theatre to the world. Frank Hilbrich’s production, inspired by the spirit of the artful, spontaneous improvisation of the commedia dell’arte, premiered in Bremen in the spring of 2024 and is now set to shake up Gelsenkirchen’s Blau theatre with a hefty dash of its complementary colour, orange.