The Gambler

Dostoyevsky nevertheless turned his own experience of loss – gained at the roulette tables of German spa towns, where he gambled away all his money as well as that of his lover – to his advantage: with the novel The Gambler , written under intense pressure, he freed himself from a blackmailing publishing contract in 1866. Half a century later, the young Sergei Prokofiev was fascinated by the panopticon of rootless characters trapped in the fictional town of Roulette, spellbound by the wheel that promises fortune. Axel Ranisch, who is presenting a new interpretation of Der Rosenkavalier this season, directed the Stuttgart premiere of Prokofiev’s bitterly satirical opera.