GENRE AND INTONATION SPECIFICITY OF «ADRIANA LECOUVREUR» BY F. CHILEA AND THE TRADITIONS OF VERIST MUSICAL THEATER

Abstract

The study summarizes the genre-stylistic and intonational specificity of F. Chilea’s opera «Adriana Lecouvreur», which is considered in the context of the poetics of Italian verist musical theater. The purpose of the work is to identify the intonational and genre-stylistic specifics of the opera «Adriana Lecouvreur» by F. Chilea in the context of typological guidelines of Italian musical verismo. The methodology of the work has a complex nature and is based on a combination of the principles of interdisciplinary, historical-typological, hermeneutic and genre-stylistic research methods. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the fact that it is the first in Ukrainian musicology to summarize the genre and dramaturgical specificity of F. Chilea’s opera «Adriana Lecouvreur» and its contact with the guidelines of Italian operatic verismo. Conclusions. F. Chilea’s opera «Adriana Lecouvreur» (1902) was written based on the play by E. Scribe, who turned to the dramatic life story of the 18th-century French actress Adriana Lecouvreur, who became famous as the performer of the main roles in the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. The genre definition of F. Chilea’s opera as a «comedydrama » corresponds to the nature of the development of the action, in which the comic backstage life of the theatrical environment always coexists with the tragic fate of the opera’s main heroine. Indicators of verist opera in F. Chilea’s «Adriana Lecouvreur» are manifested both in the author’s appeal to the «drama of jealousy»; and in the appeal to the everyday life of theatrical artistic bohemia; and in the rapid, continuous development of the action; and in the extreme expressiveness of musical speech, although without appealing to the «aesthetics of the scream»; and in the appeal to the verist musical-theatrical principle of reproducing “theater within a theater”, which is emphasized not only by the acting role of the main character, but also by the introduction of the ballet pantomime “The Judgment of Paris” (Act III). At the same time, the intonation and dramaturgical specificity of “Adriana Lecouvreur” by F. Chilea reveals contact with the traditions of French dramatic and musical theater, which is manifested both in the appeal to the play by E. Scribe, and in the composer’s appeal in the culminating moments of the opera to the art of French theatrical melodeclamation, marked in F. Chilea’s opera by special notation. The appeal to this technique reveals not only the artistic role of the main character, but also the wide range of expressiveness of her vocal part, the depth of her image and, at the same time, implies creative searches in the field of vocal performance in 20th-century music.