The Leitmotif of Laughter in Sergei Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges

Along with the musical leitmotifs, Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges has important literary leitmotifs. This can be explained by the following. Prokofiev was working on music and libretto practically simultaneously (as he himself put it, “you write a phrase, and there comes a musical idea”). Musical and literary leitmotifs have a very sophisticated interaction and an equal contribution to the dramaturgy. The main literary leitmotif is laughter in all possible forms: the word “laughter”, its derivatives and synonyms in different parts of speech along with the sounds of laughter (“ha-ha”, etc.). The laughter in Prokofiev’s opera has a sacramental meaning. Soviet folklorist V. Propp wrote a study called On the Comic and Laughter, where he points out that laughter in folklore means an entry into life, whereas its absence or taboo represents death. From this point of view, the Prince in The Love for Three Oranges is not only sick—he is actually dead, so the only cure to bring him back to life is laughter. In the second half of the opera the leitmotif of laughter is replaced with the leitmotif of three oranges. That is because the fairytale consists of two independent pieces, and the Prince’s laughter serves as an impetus to launch the main plot of looking for the oranges. Two pieces of the opera form a whole by its key intrigue: a constant confrontation of “the helpers” and “the villains” who, according to their functions (specified by Propp), interfere with the Prince’s fate

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