The Gambler (Russian: Игрок — Igrok in transliteration) is an opera in four acts by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer, based on the story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Prokofiev had decided on this story as an operatic subject in 1914, and the conductor Albert Coates, of the Mariinsky Theatre, encouraged Prokofiev to compose this opera and assured him of a production at that theatre. Prokofiev wrote the opera in pia...
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The Gambler (Russian: Игрок — Igrok in transliteration) is an opera in four acts by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer, based on the story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Prokofiev had decided on this story as an operatic subject in 1914, and the conductor Albert Coates, of the Mariinsky Theatre, encouraged Prokofiev to compose this opera and assured him of a production at that theatre. Prokofiev wrote the opera in piano score between November 1915 and April 1916, and completed the orchestration in January 1917. Vsevolod Meyerhold was engaged as stage director. However, in the wake of the 1917 February Revolution, that production never occurred.
The opera did not receive its first performance until 1929, after it had been extensively revised (in 1927), at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels.
The Bolshoi Opera performed the opera at the Metropolitan Opera (The Met) in New York City in 1975, but the Met mounted its own first production in March 2001....
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