Reading the topic of Turandot by the Chinese composer Wei Minglun in the Sichuan National Opera

Abstract

The study of the first reading by the means of the national musical language and opera and theatrical tradition of China of the Oriental theme Turandot at the opera Wei Minglinu «The Chinese Princess» was conducted with the aim of outlining the specifics of the new figurative role of the heroine, its mental-psychological peculiarities; considering the metamorphosis of the Oriental tradition through the «congenital» of the exotic to the national-authentic. Scientific approaches are taken from the contextual field of comparative and imagoology, the methodology of which touches upon the field of studying the problems of mutual cultural representations of peoples, the assimilation of cultural heritage and images of a certain ethnic group in the consciousness and art of other nations, in correspondence with the actual problems of Orientalism in music. Reading the image of Turandot by a Chinese composer creates an opportunity for a new interpretative turn in the voluminous space of the existence of this text, the emergence of new measurements of the indicators of content and its characteristics. Image Turandot as an original model with the corresponding geocultural imago in the fabulous poetics of the perceptual field «East as Exotics and Danger», passing complex path of modification during the 300- year existence in the adaptation of different cultures, is embodied in means of national semantics of bright ethnographic-anthropological type. The author constructs an ethno-form from an Oriental-exotic heroine, demonstrating his national identity, revealing the typical ethnological features of the whole people. This allows us to interpret this opera as a national first reading, in which the generally accepted European model of Oriental travel fantasy semantics turns into a reasoned, realistic, based on traditional philosophical foundations, Chinese lyrical drama, in which exotic elements of European culture appear. The fact of this transcultural diffusion involves scientific research in the field of dialogue of cultures, encouraging new discoveries when meeting with the Other, re-evaluating, updating, rebuilding the position of "My" and "Other" in relation to to generally human and universal.