Stage Concept of the Golden Calf Dance in Myroslav Skoryk Opera "Moses"

Abstract

The authors of the article considered the peculiarities of the stage interpretation of the vocalchoreographic component in Myroslav Skoryk's opera "Moses", namely the scene of worship before the Golden Calf. Two productions of this opera, which took place in Kyiv and Lviv, were analyzed. The relevance of this plot is due to the appeal to works of a parable direction in the fateful period for mankind, times when one has to choose one's own path on the basis of the spiritual treasury of Christianity - the Bible. The essence of the dance before the Golden Calf is a kind of echo of ancient Egyptian honors performed before the sacred Apis bull and Assyro-Babylonian religious rites dedicated to the god Baal. The characteristic signs of the pagan ritual of worshiping the Golden Idol, their manifestation in an orgiastic, passionately seductive dance with the excitement of the winefueled imagination of the crowd, driving it to frenzy and immoral acts, are proven. In order to create an artistic and holistic performance, it is necessary to synthesize oratorical features (the leading function of the choir, symbolic-generalized interpretations of events with their static-slow-motion unfolding) with operatic specifics (dynamic directing, bright scenography, expressive musical dramaturgy). The article notes the logic of the dance mise-en-scene with the ballet appearance from the choristers who are opponents of Moses, the ballet dancers gradually shed their clothes, and the audience watches the transformation of a religious ceremony into an orgy in the Lviv opera version. The Lviv version differs from the Kyiv version in that the latter has an interpretation of the idolatry scene with a weakly expressed conflict between the two ideological camps due to a simplified miseen-scène of introducing the ballet into the dance action without delineating its affiliation with Moses' opponents. The conformity of the stage solution of the dance of the Golden Calf in the Lviv and Kyiv versions of the opera to the creatively reinterpreted ancient pagan cult of fetishization of wealth and power is proven. Attention is focused on the logic of mise-en-scène in the Lviv version of the play, and on the psychologization and personification of the characters' images in the Kyiv version. The need for complex integrated studies of the use of ancient cult rituals in opera performances with the synthesis of historical, cultural, theological, ethical-aesthetic, socio-psychological, art-based foundations of the existence of a certain ethnic group in the conditions of the development of civilizational processes is predicted.