Chekhov's prose in the opera of the late XX-beginning. XXI centuries .

Abstract

As the world theatrical practice of the last decades shows, it is the legacy of A.P. Chekhov that is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for many directors and composers. There is a huge number of works devoted to the topic "Chekhov and music". The musicality of Chekhov's prose is one of the most frequent topics in philological and musicological studies. Plays, novels, and short stories by the author have more than once become an occasion for new creations in the opera house. In this article, the author examines the famous operas of composers of the turn of the XX-XXI centuries based on the prose of A. Chekhov. The works are arranged according to the principle of differences between the plot plot and the libretto of operas from the literary source. In foreign musicology, the genre transformation of opera, in which the literary component becomes the main factor of centralizing unity, has been called literary (the term of K. Dahlhaus). In the most general sense, this genre should be understood as a reliable musical version in accuracy or in the abbreviation of the literary source. In Russian musicology, literary opera is a little-studied area of music history, which allows us to speak about the scientific novelty of the presented material. Thus, in the article the author comes to the conclusion that operas based on A.P. Chekhov stand apart in the implementation of the genre of literary opera in the domestic theater of the selected period. Based on the analysis, the author identifies three types of literary opera, which allow to characterize the method of composers' work with the literary source.