About the work
The Gambler is an opera in four acts by Sergei Prokofiev after Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel of the same name, for which the composer also wrote the Russian libretto. A first version was written between 1915 and 1917 for the Mariinsky Theatre, but its planned 1917 premiere was prevented by the February Revolution; only after a thorough revision in 1927–28 did the opera receive its premiere, on 29 April 1929, at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels.
Plot
In the fictional spa town of Roulettenburg, the tutor Alexei falls in love with Polina, stepdaughter of a heavily indebted Russian general. While the family anxiously awaits the inheritance of the wealthy grandmother, she herself gambles away her fortune at the roulette table. To win Polina, Alexei eventually stakes his own fortune at the tables and wins a vast sum — but in doing so increasingly loses himself to his addiction.
Cultural significance
Prokofiev consistently avoided closed arias and choruses in favour of a continuously composed, declamatory idiom close to the novel's speech rhythms, making the opera one of the most radical stage works of his early career. As an émigré, Prokofiev could not have the work performed in the Soviet Union for decades; its Russian premiere did not take place until 1963, in Moscow.