American Performers Research Articles

Community opera: A short introduction and a case study in Italy

Around the beginning of the 2000s, among various responses to the crisis in traditional opera, a few Western theatres and festivals started to propose community operas based on the involvement of professional and amateur performers as co-creators. This article traces the idea back to the pre-Second World War United States and its more general use from the 1950s onwards, although it carried with it the negative connotation of being the naive output of amateur singers and musicians. The term reappeared in the United Kingdom in a series of works put on between 1990 and 2005, especially by the composer Jonathan Dove at Glyndebourne and in other British regions. All of these were presented as ‘community opera’. Among other ventures similar to the ‘new’ community opera in the British style, La Monnaie theatre in Brussels became the first European important opera house to start a program of community operas as a staple part of its season. The first one, Orfeo and Majnun (2018), defined as ‘a participative opera’, assembled myths from both Western and Persian cultures and whose music combined Western and Middle-Eastern elements. Immediately after, the first Italian community opera, Silent City, was produced in 2019 in the then European Capital of Culture Matera, establishing a new model of opera centred on social inclusion and involving people with disabilities. This article is aimed at defining the origins of community opera and at exploring similar phenomena around the globe.

УКРАЇНСЬКЕ КОБЗАРСТВО: ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ ТА ЕТАПИ РЕАКТУАЛІЗАЦІЇ СОЦІОКУЛЬТУРНОГО ЯВИЩА

Backgraund. The article is devoted to a generalized overview of the complex socio-cultural phenomenon of kobzars tradition, in particular, evolutionary changes in the forms, functional features of this phenomenon and its components during the period available for ethnological analysis (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). The object of the article's analysis is the repertoire, instruments, stylistics, and form of activity of professional and amateur performers, generally called kobza and bandura players, their social status and function, moments of social self-organization, and stratification of the phenomenon. Methods. To analyze the phased changes in the image and function of the kobza-bandura player in the Ukrainian national cultural process, the emergence and changes of the stereotypical paradigm, the comparative-historical and descriptive methods, as well as the method of complex analysis were used. Results. Research attention is focused on the specification and analysis of the three main historical stages of the phenomenon under study, the historical context that led to structural, functional and semantic transformations. The main attention is paid to the last stage - the folklore reproductive school, which combined the two previous stages and represents the object of study in the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The analysis was carried out at three levels: instrumental, repertoire, structure and socio-cultural place of performers. Conclusions. The Kobzars tradition as a complex socio-cultural phenomenon has a multidimensional structure, which made it adaptable and capable of rapid modifications of its constituent elements in order to maintain its presence and hold dominant positions not only in the field of traditional culture, but also in the cultural and political processes of national formation. The article is somewhat polemical in nature, as it raises topical issues of the past and present and reveals controversial forms of manifestation of a genetically unified cultural phenomenon.

А.Н. Толстой в воспоминаниях М.В. Неуструевой. Часть 1. Лёша и Маничка

This publication is a fragment of the memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva (1885–1961), written in the mid-second half of the 1950s, and opens a cycle of two articles, the first of which, “Lyosha and Manichka,” deals primarily with the first period of the memoirist’s acquaintance with the future writer A.N. Tolstoy, dating from the late 1890s to the middle of 1900s. In her memoirs, Neustrueva describes her acquaintance and meetings with Tolstoy, amateur performances in which they took part together, and several episodes dating back to the time when Tolstoy had already become a student and was returning to Samara on vacation. The publication accompanies the memoirs of Maria Neustrueva with an introductory article, which reconstructs the biography of the memoirist and the history of her work on them using available sources. Memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva are published for the first time.

Performance for Community Building：The Japanese Diaspora’s Cultural Activities in Early Twentieth Century Seattle

As the number of immigrants from Japan increased in early twentieth century Seattle, Japanese diasporic communities developed their cultural activities such as publishing newspapers, forming literary groups, and running fundraising events. Recent research of Japanese-language literature is expanding its scope to these cultural fields of diasporic communities and deepening our understanding of the role of cultural infrastructure amid the constant transformation of communities in flux. To contribute to delineating these diverse cultural histories, this article examines an amateur performance by literary group members (bunshigeki), which was a fundraiser for their public library project, as an example of community building through collective creation. In order to do so, this article excavates Japanese-language newspapers and weeklies available in the Hoji Shinbun Digital Archive along with special collections at the University of Washington. Literary group members’ voices in Japanese-language print media express that their engagement with amateur performance was public commitment to community building. Contextualizing their practices in the history of Japantown in Seattle, this article highlights the way in which people’s participation in cultural activities was a public engagement that would create new infrastructure for unstable diasporic communities.

The concept of professionalism in Ukrainian traditional ensemble instrumental music

The term “musical professionalism” is used not only for written academic Euro- pean music, but also for world oral traditions and is primarily related to the level of skill and social status of the performers. In the context of Ukrainian traditional culture, there are three groups of profes- sional musicians: 1) Wandering minstrels known as “kobzari” and “lirnyky” (lute “kobza” and hurdy-gurdy players) who, by the mid-20th century, formed professional organiza- tions with their own hierarchy and rules. Their repertoire mainly consisted of epic songs of historical, religious, or moralistic nature. 2) Musicians-shepherds, primarily playing wind instruments, for whom music was an integral part of their pastoral activities, often performing signaling melodies. 3) So-called “trojisti muzyky”, musicians who formed ensembles to provide mu- sic for wedding ceremonies, dances, and other events. The kobzari and lirnyky’s musical culture has mostly lost its direct oral trans- mission and exists today mainly in reconstructed forms. Equally, with the evolution of their profession, musicians-shepherds moved to the status of amateur performers. Therefore, ensemble musicians remained the only professional folk musicians who re- present the current state of development of Ukrainian traditional instrumental music. The criteria of folklore professionalism depend on the specifics and needs of certain environments. Despite this, there are several attempts to define universal signs of traditional professionalism. But criteria of professionalism, which are suitable for ones cultures, are not quite suitable for others and change not only in space, but also in time. Based on the predecessors’ experience, as well as numerous own field studies, the author defines the following criteria for the Ukrainian professional folk ensemble musicians. These include: natural talent, elements of the educational process, perfect mastery of one or more instruments, the ability to make or fix them, publicity and pay- ment for the playing, mandatory participation in rituals and entertainment of their en- 54 vironment, knowledge of their repertoire, constant performing practice and improve- ment, professional terminology, high competition between musicians, association in instrumental (wedding) bands. So, each group of folk performers had its own standards of professionalism. Folk professional musicians are the creators, bearers, masters, innovators, and “promoters” of instrumental culture, gifted and vibrant personalities who shape the future of their tradition.

Fumbling towards community-engaged opera creation: A reflexive dialogue

This article analyses reflections of two years of an opera creation project that integrated professional artists with community participants. The authors, who were involved as artists in the project, explore one line of inquiry guiding the larger project: can the perceived exclusive, high-cultured opera medium welcome amateur performers successfully? What is the nature of the collaboration? The authors integrated critical discourse studies (CDS) with arts-informed research practices to inform methodology. The analysis is presented as a scripted dialogue, focusing on three interconnected themes: the relationship of opera to community music; tensions of inclusivity in a creative project occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic; and considering creative and decision-making processes in co-creation. We examine how our experiences were organized though language and connected to discourses of inclusivity and excellence in community music.

Amateur Theatre at the Early Modern Inns of Court? The Implications of a Performance Copy of Jonson’s 1640 Folio

This article discusses a recently rediscovered copy of Ben Jonson's 1640 Workes that contains seventeenth-century annotations to Epicene that suggest preparations for performance. We trace the folio copy’s provenance with the Powell family in Nanteos, Wales, and consider the possibility that it may have been annotated when in the possession of Sir Thomas Powell, a lawyer and judge who spent much of his life in London. We argue that the annotated play-text can be connected to four other playbooks by William Shakespeare and James Shirley that have been previously associated with seventeenth-century amateur theatricals, and that the new evidence provided by the Jonson text points plausibly to a practice of amateur performance at and around Gray's Inn in the middle of the century.

Formation of Innovative Activities of Technology Teacher

This article analyzes the motives of amateur performance, creativity and creativity in the activities of a technology teacher, and in order to create a new situation of communication, the teacher should influence the creativity of his personality, introduce innovations, a new situation of communication is a new situation of communication. This is explained by the teacher's ability to create his own position of independence, pedagogical science, a new attitude towards himself.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSICAL CIRCLES IN EDUCATION OF HIGH SCHOOLSTUDENTS

Speaking about amateur art circles, it should be noted that these are mainly musical circles that solve various problems: they develop artistic creativity, musical abilities, form aesthetic tastes, teach you to express your feelings through music, dance and facial expressions, help to identify the most gifted in the field of art children, help children rationally use their free time. In the article, the author determined the content, specifics and effective forms of work of musical circles, investigated the requirements for the work of musical circles, the ways and possibilities of connecting circle work with the process of teaching music lessons in high school, developed a number of recommendations for the pedagogical management of musical circles of school amateur performances and planning group work systems.

The evolution of Early Music

Early Music has evolved. It was launched by John Thomson as ‘A new quarterly devoted to medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music’. The invitation to contribute to a celebration of 50 years of Early Music prompted me to look back at the very first issue, January 1973, a single stapled gathering with a total of 64 pages, fully ten of which were devoted to a listing by location of early music performers (mostly teachers and amateurs, with addresses and phone numbers) who might want to get together. I counted 36 advertisements, mostly for instruments and sheet music, an important income stream in pre-internet days. There was a check-list of recordings and a concert diary. That issue contained five articles of three to seven pages each, all on some aspect of performance, three of them on instruments and instrument-makers. It was directed very specifically towards performers and those concerned with instruments and performance practice. The July 1974 issue, typically, included an article by Bernard Thomas: ‘Playing the crumhorn: first steps’. An early editorial by John Thomson was eager that the journal should not be intimidating to amateurs, seeing its primary mission as the dissemination of information about resources and particularly about instruments—makers, restoration, playing techniques, prices and so on—to the community of amateur performers internationally. His editorial in January 1975 promised a consumer’s guide to instruments. The early issues always included a pull-out octavo music supplement—in the first issue a Busnoys song edited by Howard Mayer Brown, a strong supporter of the venture, and a regular contributor.

Martyr plot and the national founding myth: staging Croatian national identity through amateur performances of a medieval genre

ABSTRACT The staging of the Play of the Life and Death of Saint Lawrence, the Martyr, by an amateur theatre group the Hvar Popular Theatre, holds a special place in Croatian theatre history for its longevity, and the position on the margins of the mainstream culture, appearing mostly in low-scale theatrical events. However, its marginal position began to change in the 2010s, with performances at high-profile events, and followed by increased media coverage. This paper examines the curious trajectory in the reception and status of this performance in the social and political context. Through my analysis I demonstrate that the genre of saints' plays gained a potential to stand in for the nation already in time of Croatian pre-independence history. However, it was thanks to the broader social and political shifts initiated by the neoconservative turn which began to shape Croatian political field since 2010, that this particular amateur production achieved the status of the national performance.

Stages of the Life and Work of Anna Zatyrkevich-Karpynska

The article examines the main stages of the life and work of the outstanding Ukrainian artist, teacher, and theater actor Hanna Petrivna Zatyrkevich-Karpynska. The sources of writing the article are materials from periodicals, memories of her contemporaries, and materials from the Romny Museum of Local History. Hanna Petrivna was born on February 20, 1855, in the noble family of the Kovtunenkos in the town of Srybny, Prylutsky District. At first, she participated in amateur performances. Since 1883, Hanna Petrivna Zatyrkevich began to perform with luminaries of the Ukrainian theater and their colleagues. She worked in professional Ukrainian theaters under the leadership of M. Kropyvnytskyi, M. Starytskyi, M. Sadovskyi, M. Starytskyi, P. Saksaganskyi, and I. Kavaleridze. It was found that the factors that influenced her development as an actress, in particular, were her environment – a serf nanny and peasants with whom she communicated all her life. Her parents and studies at the Kyiv Institute of Noble Girls contributed to her interest in the theater. During her almost forty years of work in the theater, H. Zatyrkevich-Karpynska played about 130 roles and created a whole gallery of the most diverse and unsurpassed stage images. She was famous as a comical, characteristic actress. Her work and talent contributed to the formation of the Ukrainian National Theater. The outstanding actress educated a whole constellation of students, most of whom became leading masters of the Ukrainian theater. She spent the last years of her life in the city of Romny, where she took an active part in the theater created there. H. Zatyrkevich-Karpynska is buried in Romny Central Cemetery.

Languages of “Modern” (Harbin Hotel “Modern” in the History of Russian-Chinese Cultural Relations)

The construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the foundation of Harbin determined the importance of this city in Russian-Chinese relations, which increased even more during the Civil War in Russia and after it. Various aspects of these relations can be analyzed using the example of the Harbin Hotel Modern. Its owners were the first to realize the idea of creating an entertainment and hotel complex, where the hotel and restaurant service was organically combined with the possibilities of cultural leisure and introducing the population to art. In the article "Modern" is presented as an example for studying the cultural and leisure aspects of the life of Harbin residents in the first half of the 20th century. Built on the initiative of Russian entrepreneurs, "Modern" has become a symbol of intercultural communication in a multinational city. Readiness for it, he broadcast the language of architecture, cooking, theater and cinema. The authors introduce the concept of the architectural language of the building itself, which is of great artistic value, give a brief description of the culinary language of "Modern", in which the traditions of Chinese cuisine were organically combined with European technologies, analyze the repertoire. European (Russian) and Chinese cultures met on the stage of "Modern", both amateur performers and outstanding artists performed, and important political negotiations took place. Two main periods of activity of "Modern" are considered: the first, 1906-1945, is more connected with Russian history, the second, from 1945 to the present day, represents the Chinese reality, but the Russianness characteristic of the past persists to this day. "Modern" and today plays an important role in the business and cultural life of China. The article is based on materials from Russian, Chinese and American archives and libraries, as well as on the results of the authors' field research.

СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ МЕТОДЫ И ПОДХОДЫ В ПРОЦЕССЕ ОБУЧЕНИЯ ПЕНИЮ ИНВАЛИДОВ И ЛИЦ С ОГРАНИЧЕННЫМИ ВОЗМОЖНОСТЯМИ ЗДОРОВЬЯ

The article discusses some issues of teaching singing to people with disabilities in professional vocal education based on the practical experience of the leading teachers of the Opera Singing Department at the Russian State Specialized Academy of Arts, adapted not through reducing of requirements, but through competent distribution of workload and educational material. The specificity of the contingent in most cases does not make it possible to unify methodological techniques and approaches in mastering singing skills. The educational process consists not only in the formation of the necessary competencies, but also in the preservation of health. Focusing on the issues of art therapy and socialization of persons with disabilities through their vocational guidance, the article emphasizes the role of inclusive opera theater, where the most important task is to rehabilitate persons with disabilities not just through participation in the staging process in something similar to amateur performances, but primarily through the professionalization of students. The creative space of an inclusive opera house brings together different phenomena: art, vocational education and rehabilitation. This is seen as the key to the success of people with disabilities mastering the profession of an opera artist.

Melodeklamacja, czyli pogranicza piosenki

Melodeclamation that is Borderlands of Song-Writing The notions of melodeclamation and melorecitation are almost synonymous with the genre definition of a song understood as multi-code unity of textual and musical components, for which the appropriate existence form is an audio realisation. Meanwhile, a broader academic research on the phenomenon of melorecitation is lacking, aside from short dictionary descriptions as well as relatively recent connection with the performance style characteristic for rap music. It seems that only there the expression of recitation is treated as something inspiring in connection with the musical element, as in other styles and genres the recitation with music in the background has become synonymous with being kitschy, vocally unskilled and characteristic for school as well as amateur performances of poetry. However, the historical tradition of melodeclamation and the modern examples of introducing recitation and melorecitation to songs with high art aspirations encourage us to looks at such practices more closely. Melorecitation can become a more widely used artistic choice amongst the professional performers (actor song, poetry song) but also a unobvious experiment by the artists using other’s voices – of the poet reciting his own poems – in their own projects.

Hic et Ubique: The Russian Life and Finnish Times of Cultural Ambassador Yakov Grot in the 1840s and 1850s

Abstract Yakov Grot (1812–1893) was professor of Russian literature and history at Alexander University in Helsinki, 1841–1853. He became vice-rector of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1889. He published several important academic works on Russian etymology, lexicography, and grammar. He supervised work on the Russian Academic Dictionary. In Helsinki, Grot was a mediator between the two countries. He translated Swedish literature published in Finland and wrote essays about Finnish and Swedish literature, folk poetry, and history. An invaluable source is Grot's correspondence, in three volumes, with the editor of the literary journal Sovremennik Pëtr Pletnëv. Grot received invitations to all the best aristocratic and bourgeois houses in Helsinki to participate in balls, dinners, and amateur performances. He partook in social gatherings and masquerades at the Society House and private houses. His favorite pastime was the theater. Helsinki was the playground of visiting opera and drama companies who performed mostly in Swedish and German. Some famous musicians stopped over in Helsinki on their way to and from Saint Petersburg–Stockholm–Revel. Grot's years in Helsinki coincided with the rise of national culture. Studying Grot's circle of friends and acquaintances, as well as the theater and cultural entertainments, provides deeper insight into social life in the 1840s, as well as Finnish-Russian relations.

Amateur Biographies: Attempting to Fill Archival Gaps

The biography of nineteenth-century amateur performers defies typical biographical formulae due to the paucity of information available about these performers and their productions. The story of the Lawrence sisters added another layer of challenge: determining how to contextualize an ephemeral art form within the biographical history of two women when one of them left an autobiography that, interestingly, attempts to follow typical biographical structure and yet, upon deeper analysis, only introduces yet more unverifiable knowledge gaps. By acknowledging and analyzing those gaps and the challenges they present, an organic narrative can develop—a narrative which speaks to the complexities of this work and the challenges of telling the lives of those whom history might otherwise neglect. The biography becomes, thus, the story of women whose history is imperfectly recorded and a vehicle for a discussion of a popular art form which does not readily lend itself to being archived, while also providing a narrative of the historiographical and historical possibilities that the past presents through its gaps.

Musical Amateur Performance in Ukraine of the 1930s as the Manifestation of Soviet Totalitarian Ideology

"The article comprehensively examines antinomies of the amateur performance development in Ukraine of 1930s. The factual basis of the research is the materials of the newspapers, magazines, and musical journals of this period. It is proved that the phenomenon of amateur performance, as one of the most significant phenomena of totalitarian society’s mass culture, consists in its contradictory nature: on the one hand, mass artistic movement, population’s sincere faith and enthusiasm, and on the other, politicization, ideological engagement, fear of physical destruction. The actions of the Soviet authorities in the one of most dramatic periods of the last century for Ukraine – the 1930s – regarding the dissemination and support of musical amateur music are analyzed (for example, regular financial support, awarding of bonuses, patronage, organization of public events, set-up of publishing activities, training systems for amateur performance leaders, which, in general, contributed to raising musical amateur movement in Ukraine to a professional level). At the same time, it is found that amateur performance was one of the tools for shaping the ideology of a totalitarian society. Keywords: Ukrainian culture of 1930s, amateur performance, totalitarian society, politicization of art. "

Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52

Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52

Formation of performance on string-plucked instruments in Kharkiv (based on periodicals of the mid-XIX — early XX centuries)

The purpose of this article is to learn the chronology of introduction in the musical-cultural way of life of Kharkiv of Western European and the Eastern European stringed instruments (zither, guitar, mandolin, balalaika, domra). The study of chronology is aimed at a more active introduction of the facts of use of string-plucked instruments in Kharkiv into the scientific circulation.
 The methodology for writing this article is the combination of comparative, cultural and historical, musicological approaches and methods.
 The result of scientific research of this article is demonstration of chronology of activities in Kharkiv of musicians-tourers, who were performers and teachers of play on the string-plucked instruments. The concert activity of amateur Kharkiv bands was analyzed. The mass implementation of ensembles and orchestras of guitarists — mandolinists — balalaika players in the early XX century is noted. Affinity of formation of such ensembles and orchestras in Kharkiv with Western European ensembles and orchestras is emphasized. The evolution of the development of amateur performance on string-plucked instruments in the largest cultural center of Slobozhanshchyna is traced. The number of names of musicians — tourers and local performers, teachers, heads of visiting professional and Kharkiv amateur groups of the late XIX and early XX centuries is entered into scientific circulation. The combination of Western European and local factors in the distribution and popularization of ensembles and orchestras of guitarists — mandolinists — balalaika players on the territory of Kharkiv was emphasized. Influence of Western European bands and tourers — performers on zither, guitar, mandolin on instillation and consolidation of local amateurs and, subsequently, the first professionals’ interest to the national folk string-plucked instruments is revealed. The increase in the popularity of string-plucked ensembles and orchestras among various social strata of Kharkiv society — apprenticeships, students, workers of various industries, Kharkiv intelligent environment is indicated. The mainly charitable activities of such string-plucked is emphasized. The repertoire of such groups is highlighted.
 The scientific novelty. For the first time, a chronology of the activities of touring musicians — performers on zither, guitar, mandolin and teachers playing these and similar instruments is traced. The concert activity of amateur Kharkiv bands was highlighted and analyzed according to chronology, the mass implementation of ensembles and orchestras of guitarists — mandolinists — balalaika players in the early XX century is noted. The affinity of principles in the compositions of such collectives in Kharkiv with Western European ones is defined.
 The practical significance of the article. The results of the study can be used in lecture courses on the history of folk instrumental performance, the history of the development of folk instruments in Slobozhanshchyna, the history of intercultural relations in the field of musical art.