Sergei Prokofiev was very fond of the story when he first red the novel of Valeri Brjussow and found some autobiographical parallels with his own life, relations and philosophical orientation. His inner conflict between rationalism and Christian belief, reality and surrealism, love and affection, demon and obsession. He started the composition during his exile years in Paris and Ettal, Germany. After the unsuccessful first presentation, he composed a second version, which he was not able...

When Sergej Prokofjew’s opera „Fiery Angel“ was first performed in 1955 Russian or better Soviet music was still governed by the strict rules of socialist realism. Subsequently Prokofjew’s piece exposes  both strong anticlerical and antibourgeois sentiments : A woman, Renate, has fallen in love with an angel when she was  a girl and since then she is trying to find this angel again. In her quest she is accompanied by Rupprecht, a young man who is as...