How did Sergey Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3 use music from The Flaming Angel?

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Portrait of composer Sergey Prokofiev, circa 1938, wearing round glasses, a suit, and a tie, looking slightly to the side. — Sergey Prokofiev Sergey Prokofiev.

Sergey Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (1928) is directly based on thematic material drawn from his opera The Flaming Angel.1

Prokofiev spent several years, from 1919 to 1927, working on The Flaming Angel, which was based on a story by the Russian author Valery Bryusov. Because the opera did not find a producer during the composer's lifetime, Prokofiev repurposed its musical themes for his third symphony, allowing the intense dramatic qualities of the operatic work to be preserved within the symphonic form.1