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The American Dream and the Parisian Reality 11:59 Miles: When Prokofiev lands in San Francisco in August 1918, he’s immediately compared to Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was already this huge star in the States. But they were total opposites. Rachmaninoff was the "melancholy Romantic," and Prokofiev was... well, he was the guy who played his own music with so much force people thought he was going to break the piano.
12:20 Lena: His New York debut was a success, but he hit some major roadblocks with his operas. He had this contract with the Chicago Opera for "The Love for Three Oranges," but the director, Campanini, died suddenly. The whole production got pushed back, and Prokofiev was left in a serious financial hole.
12:35 Miles: It was a classic case of Prokofiev’s bad luck with opera. He spent so much time and effort on "Three Oranges" that his solo career as a pianist started to suffer. He was struggling to make ends meet, and by 1920, he decided he’d had enough of America. He headed to Paris. He didn't want to go back to Russia as a "failure," so Paris was the next best thing.
12:56 Lena: And Paris was where the action was. He reconnects with Diaghilev, finishes his Third Piano Concerto—which is now one of the most famous concertos in the world—and finally sees "The Love for Three Oranges" premiere in Chicago in late 1921.
13:09 Miles: "Three Oranges" was his one big operatic success during his lifetime. It’s this surreal, funny, fairy-tale opera. But even then, there was drama. He played the score for Stravinsky in Paris, and Stravinsky—who was becoming a bit of a rival—refused to listen to more than the first act. He told Prokofiev he was "wasting time" writing operas.
13:30 Lena: Ouch. And Prokofiev didn't take that lying down, did he?
13:34 Miles: Not at all. He told Stravinsky that he wasn't exactly "immune to error" himself. Apparently, they almost came to blows! They had to be separated. Their relationship was strained for years after that. Prokofiev felt Stravinsky was getting too "Bach-ish" with his newer stuff, and he wasn't afraid to say it.
13:52 Lena: During this time, he also meets Lina Codina, a Spanish singer. They get married in 1923, and she becomes a huge part of his life abroad. They move to Ettal in the Bavarian Alps for a while so he can focus on a new project—"The Fiery Angel." This was a dark, expressionist opera about demonic possession.
14:10 Miles: "The Fiery Angel" is fascinating because it shows a different side of him—something more intense and mystical. But it also proved impossible to stage. He spent years on it, and it was never performed in his lifetime. Eventually, he got so frustrated he just took the musical themes and turned them into his Third Symphony.
14:29 Lena: That seems to be a recurring theme for him. If an opera or a ballet fails, he just "recycles" the best parts into a symphony or a suite. It’s like he was determined that none of his good ideas would go to waste.
14:41 Miles: Precisely. By the mid-1920s, he’s back in Paris, and he’s sensing that he’s "no longer a sensation." The Parisian audience was always looking for the "next new thing," and he felt he was being overshadowed by younger composers or by Stravinsky’s latest pivots. But then Diaghilev commissions "Le pas d'acier"—"The Steel Step."
15:02 Lena: This was the "industrial" ballet, right? It was supposed to portray the industrialization of the Soviet Union.
15:08 Miles: It was very "modernist"—lots of gears, factories, and mechanical energy. Paris loved it. It was a huge hit. But it also started putting him on the radar of the Soviet authorities. They saw him as this "musical ambassador" who could bridge the gap between the USSR and the West.
15:27 Lena: It’s around this time that he starts getting homesick. He makes his first concert tour back to the Soviet Union in 1927, and the reception is... well, it was more than he could have hoped for.
15:38 Miles: He was treated like a king. People in Moscow and Leningrad were obsessed with his music. He saw a staging of "The Love for Three Oranges" at the Mariinsky Theatre, and it was a triumph. He started thinking that maybe, just maybe, his real future wasn't in Paris or New York—it was back home.