Peculiarities of the mutual influence of Italian and Chinese musical theater tradition in historical development
Authors: Li Qiang 
Published: September 2023

Statement of the problem. Modern opera performance art in China is closely related to the national theater tradition, which has a thousand-year history. Despite the fact that Italian (and generally European) musical and dramatic art has been known in China for more than a few century, the public did not perceive it for a long time due to significant differences in many aspects: from stage dramaturgy, vocal roles to behavioral norms in the theater institutions. This study draws historical parallels between Italian opera and national Chinese music-theatre art and examines attempts to adapt Italian vocal art to Chinese. Objectives, methods, novelty of the research. In this investigation, we tried to find common and distinctive features in Italian and Chinese musical theater by comparison, as well as to identify the factors that influence the perception of the theater work by the Chinese public. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the path taken to adapt Italian vocal art to the Chinese language, the national musical theater and its audience is analyzed, and the role of tradition in this process. The main research method is comparative, with the help of which the common and distinctive features of Chinese and Italian musical theater are revealed; methods of historical musicology and cultural studies were also used. Research results. The development of Italian and Chinese musical theater in certain historical periods took place in parallel, so they have a number of similar typological features. Both Chinese and Italian theaters synthesize different types of art: singing, ballet, visual series (decoration, costumes), dramatic action. At the same time, they are fundamentally different manifestations of theatrical art. In Chinese opera, the visual component is of great importance – costumes, make-up, decor, etc., and the content and plot vicissitudes are deliberately simplified so that the audience is not distracted, but can enjoy the spectacle. The difference of Chinese opera is circus art: the actors had to have acrobatic and fighting skills and impress the audience with them. In Italian opera at the stage of its formation, the visual series was given great importance, but due to the fact that the authors of the first opera models (Florentines) considered as a model the Greek drama with its idea of moral improvement through catharsis, its dramaturgy is radically different from that of the Chinese theater; therefore, tragedies and dramas were not perceived by the Chinese audience who went to the theater to be entertained and enjoy the skill of the actors. For quite a long period after the penetration of European culture, the Chinese public did not perceive works of Western art, treated them as exotic and often did not understand their essence, aesthetics and value in general. The main obstacle was usually the language, but also the content of the theatrical works of European playwrights, translated into Chinese, did not find a response in the audience, despite the rather significant commonality in plots, themes, and issues. The public did not understand complex ideas that were accompanied by dramatic events or had a tragic ending. Conclusion. Italian and Chinese opera have many common features, but differ in their basis, and the Chinese audience did not perceive Western art for so long because of the fundamental difference in the approach to the visual and content aspects. The originality of Chinese theater drama consists in maximum visualization, which distinguishes it from European drama, in which the content is the basis of the work. The formation of modern opera performing art in China took place in the middle of the 20th century, and this process has a distinctive feature: modern national opera in European traditions was created in order to interest the Chinese public, to draw their attention to the new art. The first example of such an opera (yangban xi) – “The White-Haired Girl “(1945), created by the team of authors of the Academy of Fine Arts named after Lu Xin, became popular among the Chinese, which confirmed the correctness of the creative approach that combined European forms and Chinese performance traditions. In addition, the work was adapted for plastic (ballet), screen and traditional theater (x&#236;q&#468;) arts. The appearance of such productions contributed to the fact that the public gradually got used to European opera, and today Chinese opera art is widely represented on the national and world stages. In the years since the appearance of the first Western-style national opera, Chinese singers have mastered various classical vocal styles: Italian bel canto, traditional Chinese singing, Chinese bel canto, and now represent their own national vocal school on world stages.