Concert performance of operas in the educational process: goals, examples, innovations, perspectives
Authors: Nikitska Yevheniia , Savchenko Hanna 
Published: July 2024

Statement of the problem. A pianist-concertmaster is a well-trained, technically equipped, multidisciplinary, comprehensively developed musician. Accordingly, teachers of concertmaster departments in institutions of higher education are entrusted with a great responsibility for the training of highly professional and competitive specialists. In this context, the study of entire opera works, not individual numbers or scenes, the result of which can be a concert performance of operas, deserves special attention. This is an extremely important area of training for future concertmasters, which allows young performers to acquire the complex of knowledge and skills necessary for further work in the musical theatre. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Various aspects of concertmaster skill are studied in numerous scientific works (Borovytska, 2018; Zub, 2021; Iniutochkina, 2010; Kretov, Novik-Kretova, 2017; Molchanova, 2015, 2017; Pidporinova, 2023). The tasks of this article are to determine the goals of performing operas in the concert version by students of the class of accompanist mastery; to put together methodical instructions regarding the concertmasters’ work on the opera as a whole; to outline the prospects of a special project that has been carried out for many years at the Department of Concertmaster Skill of the Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts under the leadership of its head Ye. Nikitska. For the first time, on the basis of the application of genre and performing research approaches, methodical guidelines for the work of a student-concertmaster on a concert performance of an opera have been systematized. Research results and conclusion. The purpose of concert performance of operas by student pianists of the class of accompanist skills is to make them ready for future professional activities as concertmasters of musical theatres. That is why concert performances of operas as entire works play an important role in the system of teaching concertmaster skill. In the process of preparatory work on complete opera compositions, practical situations that pianists-concertmasters face in their further professional activities are modelled and reproduced. This allows one to develop a set of knowledge, abilities, skills and competencies that are necessary for a concertmaster in a musical theatre. The work on a concert performance of a complete opera requires a certain algorithm of actions, a teaching method, the components of which are: 1) a careful choice of the opera; 2) selection of soloists; 3) drawing up the compositional and dramaturgical plan-scheme of the opera and, accordingly, making decisions regarding the edition / cut out of the choral and choreographic (mass) scenes and the removal of minor characters; 4) if necessary, compiling the literary basis; 5) work with students on the piano part of the opera in its integrity in various aspects (interaction between concertmaster and vocalist; overcoming pianistic technical difficulties; achieving an “orchestral” sound; supporting the temporhythm of the performance as a whole). The practical worth and viability of the educational and creative project in question has been confirmed by time and numerous successful concert performances of opera works in the halls of the Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts and on the concert stages of the country; and its life-giving force will be the expansion of the repertoire and the appeal to world and Ukrainian opera art of the 20th–21st centuries.