It wasn’t long after the Chicago Opera Company postponed staging The Love for Three Oranges in December of 1919 that Prokofiev decided to create The Fiery Angel. In November of the same year he was reading Valery Bryusov’s novel, “The Fiery Angel.” At the same time he was establishing a closer relationship with his future wife, Lina Codina. For various reasons the composition of The Fiery Angel endured over many years. In April of 1920 at the Metropolitan Opera, none of his three operas - The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges, and The Fiery Angel - were accepted for staging. He received no additional support from his colleagues Sergi Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Pierre Souvchinsky, who did not care for the subject of Bryusov’s plot. Despite his unsuccessful attempts to have the work premiered, he continued working and moved from the U.S. to Europe, where he continued to compose, finishing the first edition of The Fiery Angel. He married Lina Codina in 1923. Several years later, while posing for portrait artist Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, the composer learned about the mysteries of a love triangle between Bryusov, Andrey Bely and Nina Petrovskaya. It was then that Prokofiev’s characters took shape, reflecting the conflicting relationships in Bryusov’s real life and characters from the novel, as well as themes from Prokofiev’s own life.

This paper will discuss Prokofiev’s third opera, The Fiery Angel. In addition to brief biographical, character, and plot information, topics will include issues Prokofiev encountered with creating the libretto, the relationship between his real-life love triangle and that depicted in the opera, and the impact Prokofiev’s ever-evolving relationship with religion and the occult had on the work.

Canadian composer, conductor, pianist, and organist Donald Patriquin (b. 1938) is

best known for his choral folksong arrangements but is also a composer of many original

works. Songs of Innocence, which Patriquin calls “one of my very best choral works,”

exemplifies his approach to setting text to music and provides a rich opportunity for

understanding Patriquin’s method of selecting text, creating a kind of libretto out of the

available text, setting the text to music, and conceiving of and composing instrumental

parts equal in importance to the choral parts. Also evident in this work is his attention to

such elements as precise word painting, varied theoretical approaches, and a general

musical aesthetic that focuses on beauty. This quintessential composition provides

important insights into Patriquin’s personal artistry and his approach to composition.

Patriquin does not fit text to music; instead, all of the musical elements are generated out

of the textual nuances. Patriquin’s comments on the work and his process, gleaned from

extensive email correspondence and his attendance at the U.S. premiere of the work,

provide important insights that can inform conductors and singers of his music. The study

of this suite highlights Patriquin’s expert crafting of musical elements and the methodical

layering of elements he combines to tell the musical story. Pairing Patriquin’s email

correspondence with an in-depth look at Songs of Innocence reveals his overarching

compositional ideas and underlying musical motivations.