He wrote his own libretto, basing it on the Italian play L'amore delle tre melarance, or The Love for Three Oranges (Russian: Любовь к трём апельсинам Lyubov k tryom apyelsinam) by Carlo Gozzi, and conducted the premiere, which took place at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on 30 December 1921.

Conveniently the composer had already drafted a libretto during his voyage to America, one based on Gozzi's Italian play in mock commedia dell'arte style (itself an adaptation of Giambattista Basile's fairy tale).

He had done so using Vsevolod Meyerhold's Russian translation of the Gozzi and had injected a dose of Surrealism into the commedia dell'arte mix.

But Russian would have been unacceptable to an American audience, and Prokofiev's English was scanty, so, with possible help from soprano Vera Janacopoulos, he settled on French.

"It left many of our best people dazed and wondering"; "Russian jazz with Bolshevik trimmings"; and "The work is intended, one learns, to poke fun.

L'amour des trois oranges was not performed again in the United States until 1949 when the New York City Opera resurrected it.

The work has entered the standard repertory, with regular stagings on both sides of the Atlantic and at least a dozen complete recordings, six of them videos, to its credit.

The King of Clubs and his adviser Pantalone lament the sickness of the Prince, brought on by an indulgence in tragic poetry.

Doctors inform the King that his son's hypochondria can only be cured with laughter, so Pantalone summons the jester Truffaldino to arrange a grand entertainment, together with the (secretly inimical) prime minister, Leandro.

He also gives Truffaldino a magic ribbon with which to seduce the giant (female) Cook (a bass voice) who guards the oranges in the palace of the witch Creonte.

The plotters are sentenced to die but Fata Morgana helps them escape through a trapdoor, and the opera ends with everyone praising the Prince and his bride.