Prokofiev between East and West in Brussels in the Inter-war Period

On April 29, 1929, Sergei Prokofiev’s opera Igrok was premiered in a French version
in the Belgian National Royal Opera La Monnaie in Brussels. This was the result of
a deliberate investment by the Brussels cultural elite, during the inter-war period, in
both modernist music in general and Russian music in particular. They created a unique platform for French, German, and Russian modernism. For instance, the first performances of Stravinsky’s Psalm Symphony in 1930 and Prokofiev’s Le joueur serve as testimonies of the city’s high status comparable to other major European centers of
modern music.
Prokofiev considered this premiere a springboard for further productions in other
European theaters. Although it was commissioned by Coates, the conductor of the Mariinksky Theatre, and Meyerhold promised to stage it, the opera was never performed in Saint Petersburg or Moscow, as Prokofiev had hoped for. Therefore, the Belgian premiere became more important in Prokofiev’s biography because it remained the only stage performance of this opera during his lifetime.
This paper will focus, in the first place, on the performances of Le joueur in 1929
and 1930 in Brussels by investigating the unpublished correspondence of Prokofiev with the directors of La Monnaie Spaak (who also did the translation in French) and Corneilde Thoran, among others, by analyzing the views of the set designers and stage directors, and the views of the Belgian critics. Finally, we will place these performances in a broader context and give an overviewof the concerts Prokofiev gave in Belgium between 1923 and 1936, just before emigrating to the USSR. The Belgian intellectual and cultural circles corresponding with Prokofiev in the inter-war period will be analyzed through unpublished letters found in Prokofiev’s estate in New York and in Belgian archives.