Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 29 December 1921

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

652 - 653

text excerpt

At eleven o'clock, the General Rehearsal. Coini has a cold and is below part. The orchestra manager informed me that the extra instruments, the piccolo clarinet, the fifth and sixth horns and the extra percussionist, who have so far been at only one rehearsal, would not be coming. This immediately put me in a bad temper: what the devil is the point of having fifteen orchestral rehearsals if five of the musicians turn up only for the performance and wreck the whole thing! After some fairly dramatic exchanges on this topic, the rehearsal eventually started. I went through the Prologue no more and no less than four times, making Coini beside himself with rage. But the choruses either came in too early, or not vigorously enough, or kept beating the first beat of the bar with their arms. I was sure things would go more smoothly later on.

I also repeated the second scene. At the end of the first act Garden summoned me to her office to tell me how very much she liked it, after which I reviewed with Baranovskayaany imperfections. Act Two went well, except that there were no fountains and the offstage March sounded weak. In the interval I drank coffee with Frou-frou [Maria Baranovskaya]. Among other highly perceptive comments on the staging, Frou-frou mentioned that during Koshetz's (Fata Morgana's) curse, the bass drum was too loud. I had in fact noticed this myself but had forgotten. At this moment, up came Koshetz to complain that the chorus of Little Devils was drowning her (she was wrong about this). I said: 'The chorus is fine, but Baranovskaya reminded me about the bass drum, and I will quieten him down.' Koshetz then flew at Baranovskaya, that nobody paid any attention to her, Koshetz, but as soon as Baranovskaya, this nobody, all of a sudden to suit her the bass drum needs attention.

Act Three went smoothly, and at Coini's urging I made a repeat in the Intermezzo so that the scene schange could be done with less of a scramble. During the Cook's scene, loud laughter could be heard coming from Mary, who was sitting in the auditorium. In the last scenes with the entire cast on stage, there were a few problems, and I stopped and went over some passages several times, but Coini was in a hurry as the rehearsal had to be finished by three o'clock. 'We'll go through it again tmorrow with piano,' he called from the stage.

excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 29 December 1921' pp. 652 - 653 (417 words)

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