Peter Sellars’ staging of Prokofiev’s `The Gambler’ is Salzburg Festival’s latest offbeat success

SALZBURG, Austria — Offbeat operas have been some of the Salzburg Festival’s best in recent years, the latest a colorful, outlandish and entertaining staging of Sergei Prokofiev’s “The Gambler” by director Peter Sellars. Starring soprano Asmik Grigorian as Polina and tenor Sean Panikkar as Alexei, the 125-minute work was met with enthusiastic applause when it opened Monday night in the Felsenreitschule, the theater built into the Mönchsberg mountain known for its appearance in the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.” Seven large roulette wheels/chandeliers rise and fall, each looking a bit like a pinball bumper or the Jupiter 2 from “Lost in Space.” The Felsenreitschule is covered with green moss and its archways filled with mirrors, mostly broken, in George Tsypin’s set design. Among Sellars’ updates to the libretto, adapted by Prokofiev from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866 novel, is changing “telegram” to “email” in the on-stage English titles. “Since 2 1/2 years I have this situation where I have to explain why I don’t ban every Russian artist and every outfit from the festival,” Hinterhäuser said.