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As far as I'm concerned, The Fiery Angel (Ognenny Angel in the original language) is a masterpiece of cosmic proportions, and certainly among the highest pinnacles of 20th-century operatic decadence, on par with Salome and Pelléas et Mélisande. So, just to start in a "soft" manner... the problem is that there's nothing soft about it, and regarding the comparison with the much better-known works of Strauss and Debussy, these are obviously vastly different operas, which share "only" the fundamental iconoclasm, the subversion of the stylistic norms of the preceding century. There is also a curious parallel between Renata, the cursed heroine of this opera, in the grips of her mystical-erotic obsessions, and Sergei Prokofiev himself, a daring, innovative operatic composer (and his own librettist), often irreverent and very eclectic. The Fiery Angel was his obsession; he began to conceive and compose it in the 1920s, solely on his initiative, without any theatrical commission, and, amidst various setbacks, the process dragged on for decades, so much so that, in the end, Prokofiev died a year before seeing it finally performed. The honor of hosting the premiere (sung in Italian) fell to La Fenice in 1955, which in the same year also premiered Britten's The Turn of the Screw, another decidedly "intense" opera with contents that are anything but accommodating. A glorious season, to say the least, for the Venetian theater.
But why is The Fiery Angel so special? There are many reasons; number one, or rather, number zero is precisely the foundation on which the entire musical and dramatic framework rests, namely, an extremely dense, magmatic orchestration that remains constant throughout the opera, not only in the most intense moments, keeping the listener constantly on edge. And it is precisely the orchestration that determines the type of voices required for a particular opera; it goes without saying that to cut through the orchestra in an opera like The Fiery Angel, extremely well-developed, powerful voices are needed, suitable for a heavy dramatic repertoire: Renata, the protagonist, is a role significantly more extended than Strauss's Elektra and almost as intense and demanding vocally and interpretatively, making it extremely challenging. Then there's the dark and esoteric imagery that defines this opera so profoundly, evoked with extreme clarity and effectiveness and with a style that is never slow or excessively drawn-out; on the contrary, The Fiery Angel is tight, electric, with conventional dramatic tempos, if we can call them that, and above all, exciting, there's no better adjective to describe it in its entirety.
Conventional dramatic tempos also mean that the structure is relatively segmented, divided into five acts with relatively short scenes, and the tightness of The Fiery Angel's drama partially derives from this rather conservative stylistic choice, but on the other hand, in the entire opera, there is only one sufficiently prolonged and developed solo episode that can be defined as a standalone aria: it is Renata's long, hallucinated narration in the first act, a splendid introduction for this schizophrenic, hysterical protagonist, obsessed with an angel who, like the ghosts in the already mentioned Britten's Turn of the Screw, is nothing but a psychic projection, an idealization of abuses suffered in childhood. The male co-protagonist, Ruprecht, although much more "normal," has an equally remarkable profile: for Renata, he is willing to do anything, accompany her in her bizarre magical rituals, even kill; yet he remains always rational and detached, so much so that when the lover, in a last and fatal attempt at redemption, decides to leave him and lock herself in a convent, Prokofiev makes him say: "But the monks, wolves in sheep's clothing, have little to do with sanctity, as vicious and corrupt as they are, despite living so close to the altar."; this is the mentality of writers like Matthew Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, and Charles Robert Maturin, which unfortunately never captured the public's attention in opera. In the end, we find Ruprecht not suicidal but, more prosaically, getting drunk in a tavern... in the company of Faust and Mephistopheles.
The formidable and incendiary impact of this opera lies entirely in the perfect conception of "tableaus," scenes of enormous sound and visual impact where, one by one, various minor characters intervene (but almost all very original and significant) that accompany the two protagonists. In the first act, for example, the character actors (the innkeeper, the servant, and the fortune teller), with their sing-song vocal lines, counterbalance the torment and darkness evoked by Renata, turning the tragedy into a sort of intriguing, very interesting "deviated comedy". The scene with Faust and Mephistopheles in the fourth act (note that Faust is a bass and Mephistopheles a tenor, roles reversed compared to the famous operas by Gounod and Boito) often erroneously considered a comedic interlude, is actually another, brilliant dramatic expedient aimed at the same purpose, which is to distance The Fiery Angel from any "moralistic" connotation: this opera is nothing but a cynical, dispassionate satire "masked" as a lyrical drama.
And then there's that superhuman second act, the moment of magic and the occult, where Prokofiev displays all his formidable orchestral creativity, reaching its apex in the duet between Ruprecht and the occultist Agrippa Von Nettesheim, accompanied by a monumental, powerful explosion of tubas, cellos, and bass drum; yet despite all this powerful orchestral display, stuff that would make Wagner blush, in terms of plot development, it is an entirely inconclusive scene, gloriously ends in itself, and Agrippa is depicted as a cowardly, ambiguous charlatan, despite being an extremely declamatory tenor role, almost shouted, which transmits a deceptive sensation of authority and power. Once again, therefore, Prokofiev masterfully mocks both his characters and the listener. It is solely Renata's damaged and fickle psyche, unraveling through the intricate third act, steeped in decadent romanticism, that inevitably drives the plot forward towards the grand finale.
And here, another comparison with The Turn of The Screw is apt: in Britten's opera, Miles (the equivalent of Renata), forced by the governess (Ruprecht), finally manages to openly confront his ghosts, dying immediately after; in The Fiery Angel, however, Ruprecht is too accommodating, too infatuated with Renata to push her in any way toward the "straight path"; the woman remains at the mercy of her "angel," and in the convent where she seeks refuge, her situation only worsens: her "ailment" infects the nuns, driving them inexorably to madness; the inquisitor called to exorcise her can do little, and impotent and humiliated, he can only resort to the usual methods: sending the witch to the stake, more or less the same thing Herod does with Salome in Strauss's masterpiece, thus marking a symbolic triumph for the anti-heroine. This is the final act, which begins slow, solemn, and hieratic and gradually descends into an orgiastic and primordial chaos, with choral scores increasingly intricate and hysterical until a sudden implosion. A final, brilliant dramatic construction culminating in the masterpiece of a visionary genius; incidentally, I find The Fiery Angel, despite its particularity and complexity, extremely engaging and catchy; it's not Pelléas et Mélisande, or Parsifal, or even Simon Boccanegra, which, for various reasons, might prove challenging for an "untrained" listener; so why not start with opera from here? A rather unorthodox suggestion, but I'd say it fits perfectly.
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