The specifics of the narrative in the opera genre
Authors: Liu Xia 
Published: May 2020

Logical reason for research. The opera art remains an object of high attention of the public, and of the composing and performing art; it has a diverse repertoire in various historical, national and author’s styles, it is presented by interesting results in the field of innovations and theatre experiments. This situation has always led to theoretical understanding and generalization in musicology studies at various levels; it raises many questions related to the genesis and development of the opera genre, its historical path, both in historical, cultural and theoretical understanding, as well as in the performing sphere, in line with the modern interpretology searches. This aspect combines a number of historical, theoretical and practical questions into a single complex, and also allows one to find answers to these questions related to the demands of both musical science and musical practice. Innovation. The article is devoted to one of the most basic genre indicators of an opera composition. The narrative in music is presented as a special setting for the verbal narrative, associated, on the one hand, with the narrative plot, and on the other hand, with an emotional assessment of the events reflected; these two vectors interact in the opera at the genre level. One of the theories of literary criticism, which can be useful both in the process of theoretical research of the opera genre and in the field of the practical embodiment of an opera composition on the stage, is the theory of the narrative. Associated with the study of a special type of the narrative, this theory can be involved in the study of opera compositions, which also represent the embodiment of the narrative, as a rule, quite large-scale and complex, where the narrative, the plot, is realized both by the word and by means of the dramatic art. Objectives. The purpose of the presented study is to identify the specifics of the action of the narrative in the opera genre. Methods. The main methods of the presented research are the genre one and the narrative one. The first is related to the identification of the genre meaning of the narrative in an opera composition, the second helps to characterize the structural and semantic features of the narratives that are involved in the opera genre. Results and Discussion. The systematization of scientific sources on the theory of the narrative, according to its specifics in the musical art, in particular in the opera genre, is certainly relevant for substantiating the theory of the opera narrative. The most systematic is the study by V. Schmidt “The Narratology”. Many scientific sources related to the study of the narrative address semantics issues as well. In the modern musicology, this aspect of research is very important; this is confirmed by scientific works devoted, in particular, to the musical and theatrical art, which has a synthetic artistic nature and the complex nature of the interaction of musical and extra-musical factors and, accordingly, the multi-level nature of semantics. Also noteworthy is the emergence of a large number of studies on musical interpretation, which are also devoted to semantics in the musical art both at the composing and at the performing level. Musical-scenic genres and, in particular, the opera as the leading one of them, has precisely the narrative character of its nature – this is a narrative about a number of interrelated events, which has a storyteller-mediator and an emotional assessment of what is happening. Thus, the narrative is a genre component of the opera and one can analyse the effect of the narrative at different levels of the opera genre – the author’s (composing) one and the performing (musical, stage, taking into account various parameters of the text and subtexts of the composition) one. A separate issue is the specifics of the genre varieties of the opera, but the narrativeness remains an integral part of its nature, even in the mono-opera, where the narration gets the status of “the first person”, but the suspension still occurs – it can have a temporary, plot-like, communicative character. The narrativeness as a genre quality in the opera is the result of the correlation of the verbal text and the corresponding plot of the vocal composition (the extra-musical component) and the peculiarities of their musical embodiment (the musical component). The narrative qualities can be manifested at all levels of the opera text, both to enhance the emotional colouring, and to contrast the juxtaposition, and to create the dramatic depth. In accordance with the synthetic nature of the genre, the opera narratives also show their synthetics. The task of the performer as a participant in the opera performance from the point of view of the implementation of the narrative has the character of a composing performing interpretation to identify the artistic potential of the composition, as well as to create its individual performing version (from the singer to the conductor and the director). Conclusions. The use of the knowledge of philology and literary criticism in the musical science exists owing to the use of the word in the musical art. Manifestations of the narrativeness in music are primarily associated with those genres where literature, verbal text, and word are involved. The narrative as a story-telling, among other things, is characterized by an emotional attitude that is as if directed from the outside towards the one to whom the narrative is directed (in literature – the reader, in music – the listener). The most vividly and systematically the specificity of the action of the narrative (the narrativeness) manifests itself where there is a word and a story-telling, a plot, namely in the musical-stage genres, especially in the opera. Here, the narrative determines the specifics of the genre, while acting at several levels, since it is associated not only with the literary, but also with the theatrical factor. Another important quality of the narrative is the connection with the mediator between its source and the recipient, and in the art of music such a special intermediary is the performer; consequently, the narrative in music is firmly connected with the performing interpretation, and with the performing art.