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Afternoon Concert: Thursday Opera Matinee: Prokofiev's The Gambler

Thursday Opera Matinee: Prokofiev's The Gambler

16/11/2017

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert, Thursday Opera Matinee: Prokofiev's The Gambler

Verity Sharp presents Prokofiev's The Gambler in a recording from the Vienna State Opera.

Verity Sharp presents Prokofiev's opera The Gambler in a recording from the Vienna State Opera. Prokofiev completed this exciting and energetic score in his late 20s.

In today's Opera Matinee, Verity Sharp presents Prokofiev's The Gambler in a recording from the Vienna State Opera as part of Radio 3's season Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture.

Prokofiev's 4-act opera is based on a novel by Dostoevsky, who understood the lure of the gaming tables only too well, being addicted to gambling himself. Set in Roulettenburg, a fictional German spa town, the opera deals with the ups and downs of winning and losing and obsessive greed. Prokofiev wrote his own libretto and completed the score in 1917, in his late 20s. It is written in his most exciting early style with high energy and motoric rhythms.

Prokofiev: The Gambler

The General ..... Dmitry Ulyanov (bass) 
Pauline ..... Elena Guseva (soprano) 
Alexei ..... Misha Didyk (tenor) 
Babulenka ..... Linda Watson (mezzo-soprano) 
The Marquis .....Thomas Ebenstein (tenor) 
Blanche ..... Elena Maximova (mezzo-soprano) 
Mr Astley ..... Morten Frank Larsen (baritone) 
Vienna State Opera
Simone Young (conductor)

2pm Act 1

2.25pm Act 2

3pm Act 3

3.25pm Act 4

4.05pm
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B flat
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Nicholas Collon (conductor).

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