Opera as Reflected in Russian Academic Periodicals of the Last Five Years

Abstract

The article gives an evaluation of the present-day condition of research works dedicated to opera in Russian academic periodicals and their correlation with publications in musicology in other countries. The material for analysis was provided by over 200 articles from 18 Russian journals, as well as a number of works written in English. As a result, it was possible to reveal several priority aspects of examination of opera. Conclusions are made about the expansion of the chronological and geographic frameworks in research works written in Russia, which corresponds to the world-wide tendency. At the same time, as analysis has shown, Russian musicologists, unlike those in other countries, pay much less attention to the Classical and Romantic heritage, considering it to having been sufficiently studied, and give their preferences to early and contemporary works. An important place in Russian scholarship about opera at the present time is taken up by source studies works receptivity and libretto studies — the areas closely connected with the needs for preparation of academically fitted editions and performances of opera works. Special attention is paid to articles in which opera becomes an object of theoretical analysis. Herein, Russian musicology keeps pace with that in other countries. All of these observations have made it possible to come to the conclusion that at the present time such directions in research of opera predominate which earlier for various reasons remained out of the scholars’ eyesight. Russian scholarship about opera is undergoing a period of deconstruction of an entire set of cliché evaluations and filling up of blank spots, which creates the basis for new approaches to interpretation of the opera heritage and the topical processes of musical theater.