Screen Images in Contemporary Opera: Concerning the Issue of the Genre’s Renewal at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Main Article Content

Elena V. Kiseyeva

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries opera theater went through a set of succession of fermentation, which is connected with the inclusion into the opera genre of new themes, subjects and new regularities in the construction of opera librettos, with the formation of specific dramaturgical principles and stylistic discoveries. The article accentuates attention towards the issue of the changes which have occurred in the genre of opera under the influence of new media and performances. The author dwells in great detail on illuminating the question of what changes have occurred within the opera genre under the influence of the media, and what do composers and theater producers wish to achieve by bringing in screen depictions in opera production. For her research material the author has chosen operatic compositions in which innovations are connected with an erosion of the boundaries between art and reality, with a rejection of the regular laws of drama, with the strengthening of the role of the audience during the process of constructing the production’s conception. The article examines operas by Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich and Philip Glass from the positions of manifestation in them of new dramaturgical regularities. As a result of analytical observations the author arrives at the conclusion that the events instilling into the dramaturgy of the opera action by means of screen images carry out meaning-generating functions connected with the creation of the effect of suggestion and estrangement. The publication is prepared within the framework of scholarly project No. 20-012-00366 А supported by the RFFI “Performative Forms of the Art of Music as a Phenomenon of Modern Culture.”


Keywords: contemporary opera, new media, screen video images, performance.

Article Details

How to Cite
Kiseyeva Е. В. (2020). Screen Images in Contemporary Opera: Concerning the Issue of the Genre’s Renewal at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 40(3), 96–102. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1199
Section
Musical Theater
Author Biography

Elena V. Kiseyeva, Rostov State S. V. Rachmaninoff Conservatory Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Elena V. Kiseyeva, Dr.Sci. (Arts), Professor at the Music History Department, Rostov State S. V. Rachmaninoff Conservatory