Der Spieler

by Sergei Prokofiev
Opera in four acts and six scenes
Libretto by the composer based on the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky capitalized on his own experience of loss, which he collected at the roulette tables of German health resorts and gambled away all his money and that of his lover: in 1866, he freed himself from an extortionate publishing contract with the novel The Gambler , written under high pressure. Half a century later, the young Sergei Prokofiev was fascinated by the panopticon of uprooted characters in the novel, who are stuck in the fictional Roulettenburg under the spell of the wheel that promises happiness. Axel Ranisch, who is responsible for a new interpretation of Der Rosenkavalier this season, staged the Stuttgart premiere of Prokofiev's bitterly satirical opera.