RUSSIAN ROULETTE.(Prokoofiev's The Gambler)

IN THE GAMBLER, PROKOFIEV USED UNORTHODOX METHODS TO TRANSFORM DOSTOYEVSKY'S NOVELLA INTO AN OPERA

A funny thing happens in the third act of Sergei Prokofiev's The Gambler. In his first and only moment alone onstage, Alexei, the lead character, realizes that the one thing in his life that means anything to him is his love for the elusive Pauline. As the monologue builds to a climax, Alexei says Pauline's name over and over again in a passionate, almost desperate manner. There is, of course, nothing unusual about this in itself. In all forms of musical theater, from Orfeo's heartbreaking invocation of the name "Euridice" to Tony's perhaps record-breaking reiterations of "Maria," there must be thousands of instances of a desolate or anxious lover calling out to a soprano who isn't there. But in The Gambler there is a twist. Alexei grows agitated, his voice rises, the orchestra surges, and he sings, "Pauline, Pauline, Pauline." Then, suddenly, Pauline herself walks onto the stage, interrupting Alexei's monologue with a dissonantly matter-of-fact "Who is calling my name?"

This turn of events deserves a closer look. Prokofiev is not merely thumbing his nose at opera tradition. Nor is he simply setting up and then subverting the audience's expectations. In this scene he is tampering with a basic rule of drama -- the sanctity of the interior monologue, the assurance that the character is not really speaking these thoughts aloud. It is, after all, the right of the spectator not only to peek in on the lives of those onstage but also to eavesdrop on their private thoughts. But only the audience should be privy to Alexei's inner feelings, and not the other characters in the drama, not even the love of his life.

This moment, of course, does not happen in the Dostoyevsky novella on which Prokofiev based his libretto. It couldn't. It is a joke that could occur only onstage, and it is indicative of two qualities that Prokofiev, as composer and librettist, was able to bring to this adaptation: a sense of the theatrical and a healthy lack of respect for convention.

Prokofiev was not the first to see the dramatic possibilities of Dostoyevsky's works. There had been stage adaptations in Russia and Europe since the 1880s. The most prominent production took place in 1910, when the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Nemirovich-Danchenko presented a two-evening version of The Brothers Karamazov. The play was greeted by a clamorous press and a good deal of discussion in Russian literary circles. The company took the production to St. Petersburg the following year, and Nemirovich-Danchenko went on to write an adaptation of The Devils (aka The Possessed), which opened in Moscow in 1913. Critical turbulence continued. Dostoyevsky's widow applauded; novelist Maxim Gorky was appalled.

It is no wonder, then, that the idea of an opera version of a work by Dostoyevsky should have appealed to Prokofiev. In 1915, he was twenty-four years old, just back from London and Paris, infatuated with modernism and impressed by and perhaps a bit jealous of the notoriety of Stravinsky. The controversy surrounding the dramatization of a work by the great Russian writer must have made the prospect of an operatic treatment extremely attractive.

Dostoyevsky wrote The Gambler in October 1866, putting off the completion of Crime and Punishment to work on it. Although he finished it in record time to meet a serious contractual obligation to his publisher, he had been thinking about the story for quite a while. In 1863, he described his plans for a novel about "a certain kind of Russian living abroad," which would include a "detailed portrait of the game of roulette." In fact, only a few years before writing The Gambler, Dostoyevsky was himself that "certain kind of Russian," spending time and money in the gambling houses of Europe, accompanied by Appolinaria Suslova, the inspiration for the character of Pauline. He wrote to his brother Mikhail, "In Wiesbaden I created a system of gambling, put it into practice and immediately won 10,000 francs. The next morning I betrayed the system because I became overly excited, and I immediately lost." It is the excitement, the winnings and losses and the extraordinary emotional toll of the casino that Dostoyevsky captures in his novella.