The Fiery Angel (Russian: Огненный ангел — Ognenny angel in transliteration) (Op 37)

Sergei Prokofiev's opera, The Fiery Angel, could be considered one of the composer’s largest challenges. Writing, production, and location were all factors in the piece’s progress. The journey to completion was not truly over until after Prokofiev’s time when the piece was first presented in a full performance at the Theatre des Champs-Elysée on Nove mber 25, 1955, and was first premiered at the Venice Festival in 1955.

The Fiery Angel was met with mixed reviews for different reasons. Largely, The Fiery Angel was, despite lack of productions, reviewed as Prokofiev’s “… strongest and most dramatically intense scores.” In a review of the Bolshoi performance of The Fiery Angel, it is said that Prokofiev’s “…score is crazy, but shouldn’t sound chaotic.” Prokofiev may have only been interested in the overarching story rather than the smaller details. It was also criticized that maybe the language would have been better in French rather than Russian. Some even called the opera a “16th-century Carmen with supernatural trimmings” amongst other mixed reviews. Another criticism is that The Fiery Angel is nothing but confusion and noise with the “modern” title. Using staging should not be there to make up for the music, but to mix with it and make a grand production. Prokofiev was able to write the music how he saw fit, which appealed to many more than the staging has, according to different reviews.

In all, it can be assumed that Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel has had a lot of insight and thought from the composer. He used a novel that interested him very much that was written by a very important author that helped start the Russian symbolist movement. It was a work that reached the brink of public acceptance and came out as a work of great praise, most staging aside.