Three oranges stolen three times: Fyodor Komissarzhevsky's forgotten American projects and his collaboration with Victor Seroff

Abstract

This essay explores correspondence between two people: the world-famous Russian-born theater director Fyodor Fyodorovich Komissarzhevsky (Theodor Komisarjevsky) and an aspiring Russian émigré non-fiction writer Victor Ilyich Seroff. Their correspondence, held by the Houghton Library at Harvard University and dating from 1947-1950, provides a valuable tool for reconstructing the story behind this forgotten production of Sergey Prokofiev’s opera, The Love for Three Oranges, at the New York City Opera in 1949 and several unrealized projects of the director. This intriguing story also reveals the evolution of the relationship between these two Russian-born European émigrés who settled in the United States in the 1930s—tracing the trajectory from friendship to confrontation. Although most of the surviving letters were sent from Seroff to Komissarzhevsky (and only one response from the director has been preserved), it is nevertheless possible to reconstruct the development of their collaboration based on the available material.
Abstract