Losing streak

Prokofiev’s opera The Gambler adapts Dostoevsky’s novella of the same name, an audacious enterprise.

Prokofiev’s opera The Gambler adapts Dostoevsky’s novella of the same name, an audacious enterprise. Unfortunately, it fails, as I think all the composer’s operas do, apart perhaps from The Love for Three Oranges, and mainly because he gives no evidence of interest in individual human beings, and hence of the musical means which he might develop to express their individuality. War and Peace is Prokofiev’s most spectacular failure in that respect, but the war scenes do something to salvage it. There are no compensations in The Gambler, so what is quite a short opera, a bit more than two hours, comes across as a long, stagnant one. And the stagnancy is the more pronounced for the ceaseless bustle that we are witnessing. Not surprisingly, since the setting is mainly a casino, people rush in, worrying about their losses before they go on to lose a lot more; indulge in hysterics on various subjects — for the opera is concerned with the twin addictions of gambling and lust-cum-love; and pass out, insult, exit rapidly, make all kinds of scenes.