CHRISTINA GUILLAUMIER is a pianist and music historian with an early background in the dramatic arts. She is Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music. Her research interests include Russian and Soviet music and opera, piano music and genetic criticism. She is the recipient of several research awards including from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), theEuropean Union, the American Musicological Society and the Russian Federation. Recent publications include a co-edited series of landmark essays entitled Rethinking Prokofiev.

• Introduction: Prokofiev and OperaEarly Operatic Experiments and MaddalenaBetween Opera and Theatre: Radicalisation of Style in The GamblerA Successful Enterprise: Love for Three OrangesThe Devil Within: Theatre and Spectacle in The Fiery AngelTowards a Soviet Operatic Style: Semyon KotkoBetrothal in a Monastery and the Retreat from IdeologyWar and Peace: The Prokofievan Operatic Ideal?Dramaturgical Re-evaluation in The Story of a Real ManEpilogueSynopsesBibliography

Christina Guillaumier has made the first comprehensive and critical evaluation of [Prokofiev's operatic] works. The result forms a most persuasive and thoroughly researched case for this least known area of his oeuvre to which he nonetheless had brought his highest powers of thought and imagination to bear. . . . [H]ighly detailed and at the same time lucid and readable, a feat that should satisfy both the scholarly mind and arouse the interest of the non-specialist reader. . . . The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev is to be warmly welcomed for opening a valuable new perspective on this major composer's life and works.