Some peculiarities of opera libretto as a potential literary genre

Abstract

This article analyzes the changes pertaining to such level of literary works as a system of characters, category of space and time, phonetic system and composition; as well as changes in epic and dramatic oeuvres in the process of transformation of the text of literary work into an opera libretto. Analysis is conducted on peculiarities of the aforementioned levels of literary text and libretto. As an example of epic work, the author selected the A. S. Pushkin’s verse novel “Eugene Onegin” and the eponymous opera composed by P. I. Tchaikovsky; as an example of dramatic work, the author picked the two poetic dramas from Pushkin’s cycle “The Stone Guest” and “The Miserly Knight” and the eponymous operas by A. Dargomyzhsky and S. V. Rachmaninoff respectively. The following methods were applied in the course of this study: comparative based on juxtaposition of musical-scenic interpretation and precedent literary text; typological for determination of patterns, classification and generalization of the results. The author comes to the conclusion that the transformation of epic and dramatic literary texts into the opera libretto has similarities and differences on all levels of the text. The possible reasons of such phenomenon are discussed. The author answers a question whether or not libretto can be attributed to as a genre of fiction writing.