Somehow, Aleksei Maresyev not only survives a plane crash and crawls, with barely any supplies, for eighteen days, through a snowy forest from behind enemy lines and is rescued, he lives and, instead of giving up completely, regains the ability to walk and takes part in the Battle of Kursk and shoots down a number of enemy planes. In most cases, of course, the story would have ended with Maresyev's being operated on, discovering he had no feet but just prosthetics, and going through anger, denial and self-pity and just giving up.

What is most incredible about this "Story of a Real Man" is not just that Aleksei Maresyev was a real Soviet pilot -- a real man, not a fictitious concoction "made for public consumption" -- but the story as outlined above was essentially true. It's just that Prokof'yev's opera was based on a novel by the journalist Boris Polevoy, which in turn had been based on Polevoy's interview with Maresyev months before the Battle of Kursk. So of course Polevoy took reality and embellished it some, but who's complaining? Seldom if ever is an opera based on fact and even then there are novels which do take reality as their starting-points.

Writing a work for the stage, especially the operatic stage, in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule was a pretty dicey affair, as everyone saw following Shostakovich's immensely popular "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" being condemned by Stalin's infamous, unsigned editorial, "Muddle instead of Music." Following "The Love for Three Oranges," premiered in Chicago in late 1921 and "The Fiery Angel," written in 1927 but unperformed except for a concert performance of extracts in Paris the following year, Prokof'yev had not written any operas at all. Then came "Semyon Kotko," and Stalin and his henchmen saw fit to dismiss it as a "leftist" work, as they couldn't evaluate it on its own merits. "Betrothal in a Monastery" fared better but it wasn't exactly what you would call a hit, although I'm sure the Soviet critics enjoyed the scenes of monks constantly boozing it up. With "War and Peace," which went through a number of revisions following the first performance, the composer struck gold: after all, this was an opera based on Lev Tolstoy's famous novel, and everyone could identify with another struggle between Russians and foreigners, even if the invaders in Tolstoy's novel were French instead of German.

And then, in 1948, came this last opera, and once again it was into the fire with the critics.

For one thing, the Soviets had a mania, especially under Stalinist rule, about what had to happen during every year that ended in the number "7," because they wanted to pull out all the stops in celebrating the 10th, 20th, 30th etc. anniversaries of the Bolshevik revolution. Prokof'yev had been fleeing the country when that event began and abroad a decade later; in 1937 he had attempted a grand-scale work in the form of the cantata "Oktyabr'," but was persuaded not to submit it (as well he shouldn't have, especially considering what was happening during the years previous to this, most notably Stalin's disgracing Shostakovich in 1936); and, following the victory over the Axis forces, the Communists were determined that all Soviet artists were to pull out all the stops for the 1947 celebrations. And so many of them were terrified of what the official response would be that they hardly contributed anything at all (for instance, Khachaturian's Third Symphony was condemned as being too concise). And early the next year a special Congress was convened to examine the perceived dangers of "formalistic" artists, most notably composers such as Prokof'yev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Myaskovsky. It was in this atmosphere that "The Story of a Real Man" emerged -- barely.

Only a "closed rehearsal" was held at the Kirov theater in Leningrad on December 3 of that year; the critics indicated such strong disapproval that it was obvious that a production, at that time, was out of the question. And that was the beginning of the torturous history of this opera. The composer never lived to see it performed and, despite the de-Stalinization reforms, it remained on hold for another seven years. Finally, in 1958, the composer's widow, Mira, undertook a revision of the score, introducing cuts and re-arranging it from four acts to three. In this form the score was published and two years later it was premiered on October 8, 1960 at the Bol'shoi in Moscow. The next year Mark Ermler recorded the work with the same forces in a studio for Melodiya records. No other recordings of this opera have ever been made. And in 2002, shortly after Ermler's death, Chandos records (CHAN 10002[2]), in its Historical Opera series, released a digitally remastered version of this recording.

Beggars can't be choosers, folks. If you want to hear this opera, currently this is all we have in the way of a recording. One hopes and prays that Gergiev and the Kirov will get to recording it sometime in the near future and, this being the year marking the 50th anniversary of Prokof'yev's death, I wouldn't be surprised if that were only a little ways around the corner with them. I could spend some time criticizing the fact that the studio recording was a cut version of the revised score, meaning even less of the composer's music was committed to disc, or the fact that, especially in parts of Act II, the acoustics aren't the greatest, but I am going to count my operatic blessings here.

This work is not a hackneyed job, contrary to the way Prokof'yevphobes have been wont to inform us ever since the start of the Cold War. Nobody needs to ask whether it's art or not; we're dealing with a genius here, that of Prokof'yev. 'Nuff said. Maybe -- MAYBE -- opera wasn't his strongest suit so much as were forms such as symphonies, concerti, ballets and suites (one wishes he HAD made a suite from this opera, the way he had done with "The Gambler," "The Love for Three Oranges," "Semyon Kotko" and "War and Peace," not to mention the Third Symphony being somewhat derivative of "The Fiery Angel"), but it is a work of great beauty which compels. Forget the politics, just listen to the music and you will agree: this was a fitting end to Prokof'yev's career as an operatic composer.

Ermler leads the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bol'shoi Theater, Moscow; Aleksei, a pilot, is sung by Yevgeny Kibkalo; Olga, Aleksey's fiancee, is sung by Glafira Deomidova; Grandfather Mikhailo, chairman of a kolkhoz, is sung by Georgi Shulpin; Vasilissa, a grandmother, is sung by Vera Smirnova; Varya, a farm woman, is sung by Margarita Miglau; Petrovna, a farm woman, is sung by Antonina Ivanova; Seryenka, a farm boy, is portrayed by Aleksandr Suzanov; Fedya, a farm boy, is portrayed by Vladimir Kurguzov; Andrei, a pilot friend of Aleksei's, is sung by Georgi Pankov; the First Surgeon is sung by Leonid Maslov; the Second Surgeon is sung by Nikolai Zakharov; Aleksei's mother is sung by Valentina Petrova; Klavdia, a nurse, is sung by Kira Leonova; the Commissar is sung by Artur Eizen; Kukushkin, a pilot, is sung by Aleksei Maslennikov; Gvozdev, a tank driver, is sung by Vitali Vlasov; Vasili Vasilevich, the head surgeon, is sung by Mark Reshetin; the Senior physician is sung by Vladimir Petrov; Zinochka is sung by Maria Zvenzdina; and the Colonel is sung by Valeri Yaroslavtsev (the parts of Seryenka and Fedya are brief speaking roles). Every artist gives a stellar performance in this recording and I highly recommend it. For what it's worth, we can start complaining about acoustics, the cuts in the score and so on only when we have a new recording that outshines this one. I'm proud to have this in my CD collection, and so should you.