S. Grinev

Director or Conductor: To the Issue of Modern Stage Life of Opera Masterpieces

In the article the author attempts to explore the repertoire of modern opera houses from the viewpoint of approaches to the stage implementation of opera masterpieces and the identification of directing or conducting origin to be the prior. In this regard, the central idea of the article is the urgent problem of interaction between a conductor and a director in modern opera house. The author notes that the main clashes between a conductor and a director arise at the level of the choice of the piece for the production. The following frictions arise already at the stage of the opera performance’s embodiment, when conductor’s task is to preserve the musical side of a performance as much as possible in the version that it was during the composer’s life. The role of a modern director is to take the listener into a world of his own fantasies on the theme of a given opera, while often it can be very far from the original. The author focuses on a detailed analysis of the repertoire of a number of leading opera houses, from the viewpoint of identifying ‘conductor’s’ and ‘director’s’ operas. The objectives of the analysis were to identify the chronological dynamics of the ratio of classical and modern repertoire, as well as to point out the leading (in frequency) performances of classical operas, the balance of traditional (conducting) and innovative (directing) approaches to the embodiment of opera classics.

Key words

opera, contemporary direction, analysis of repertoire, opposition “conductor - director”.

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