Yugoslav Rock Opera Gubec-beg (1973–1984) – Theatrical Spectacle and Cultural Diplomacy

The paper shows how the first Yugoslav rock opera Gubec-beg was created, how its spectacular stage production made its way into the repertoire of Zagrebʼs Komedija Theatre and the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb, how important it was for Yugoslav culture at home and cultural diplomacy abroad and for public opinion regarding this performance. The paper is written on the basis of documents from the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, the domestic press and periodicals (entertainment, music, daily, youth, political, musicological, theatre), and academic and scholarly literature.

Development of the dance-rock opera genre in the creative content of ‘Mykhailo Vodianoi’ Academic Theatre of Musical Comedy, Odesa

Background. Staging of rock opera began in Ukraine simultaneously in theaters of drama, opera and musical comedy in the mid-80s. The first drama and ballet performances were based on the works of Russian authors. From 1986 to 1993 Kharkiv Theater of Musical Comedy made stage production of rock operas based on the works of Alexander Zhurbin, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alexey Rybnikov leaders of its repertoire policy. Since the 2000s, Odessa Theater of Musical Comedy has staged a dance-rock opera as a new modification of stage play with rock opera. The relevance of the article. Stage performances of dance-rock operas have not yet been sufficiently studied in Ukraine. Such Ukrainian musicologists as Olga Verkhovenko, Iryna Palkina, Halyna Filkevych fragmentarily have studied genre features and performance forms of dance-rock operas. In addition, some periodicals have covered these productions in their critical reviews. Methods. The work is based on a typological method, which made it possible to classify performances as a rock opera genre. The biographical method has also been applied to determine the artistic influences on the choreographer Heorhii Kovtun. The comparative method made it possible to separate the dancerock opera from other productions related to the genre of rock opera, as well as from apologetic performances that exploit already invented forms. When analyzing the performances, some elements of the reconstruction method were used. Results of the study. Odessa Musical Comedy Theater presented four performances in the genre of dance-rock opera, three of which were staged by Heorhii Kovtun. The first (and most successful) production with a new performance approach was the play “Romeo and Juliet” based on Shakespeare’s tragedy with music and libretto by Yevhen Lapeiko (Odessa). A new type of leading performers (selected at casting) appeared in the play. The type of rock opera artist represented by Kyryl Turychenko is characterized by freedom from musical comedy clichés. A pop singer with appropriate acting, athletic and dance training, he could sing when falling, climbing a two-story stage tower, or during a dynamic dance. Scenography by Stanislav Zaitsev showed a tendency towards brevity, constructiveness and simultaneous development of action in three stage dimensions. Other productions of Heorhii Kovtun – “The Canterville Ghost” and “Silicon Silly Woman.net” based on the works of Russian authors D. Rubin, A. Ivanov, O. Pantykin and K. Rubinsky developed rock opera principles invented by the choreographer rather than deepened them. The director of “The Canterville Ghost” did not quite clearly indicate the vector of the main idea. This led to the breakup of stage action into spectacular theatrical attractions with pyrotechnics and impressive stage design transformations. In fact, it is still not clear what the director was trying to recreate – a melodrama, a comedy with elements of satire or Guignol. The play “Tristan and Isolde” based on the works of the Ukrainian composer Alexander Nezhigai and playwright Serhii Piskuriov was staged by the theater director Vladimir Savinov. His ignorance of musical theater specifics contributed to the vocally and musically weak performance. Most of the action in the stage production was organized by the choreography of Anatolii Bedichev. Contrary to expectations, V. Savinov’s performance was also significantly inferior to Н. Kovtun’s performances in relation to libretto adaptation, stage design and tempo-rhythm of the performance. All rock-dance opera performances were aimed at teenage and youth audiences. Conclusions. Unlike rock operas of the previous decades, the production proposed by choreographer H. Kovtun is characterized by a synthesis of modern choreography, spectacular show, performance universalism and dynamс crowd scenes. As a choreographer, he did not pay much attention to the actors’ work on the characters. Vocally the singers gravitated towards the pop style (using microphones). Unlike earlier productions of rock operas in Ukrainian theater (with phonograms or symphonic jazz instrumentation of the theater orchestra), the troupe of Odessa Musical Comedy Theater performed rock operas with combined accompaniment (studio phonogram, theater orchestra, rock band). Further study of the multiple issues identified in the article requires a deep analysis of the repertoire, types of rock opera in the theater of musical comedy in Ukraine and the distinctive vocal and acting performance features.

Compositional content of English musical and rock opera texts: linguistic aspect

Every day, every active member of society deals with various types of media, interacts with other people, is engaged in cognitive activities while falling under the influence of external factors that influence a person’s consciousness, thinking, and behavior. All these processes take place in a communication situation, in which the individual inevitably becomes a participant when interacting with the outside world. One of the goals of research in the field of communicative linguistics is to identify and formulate criteria for ensuring the success (consistency) of speech interaction. Our research is devoted to the study of the linguistic problem of the text, which is proposed to be considered on the example of a musical and rock opera text as an element of a particular communicative phenomenon - musical and poetic discourse. The relevance of the work is based on the importance of the role of the linguistic component in the process of creating and perceiving the lyrics of a number of modern musical styles, which are currently one of the actively used tools for conveying information to the mass audience and influencing both the communicative activity of an everyday person and his worldview. The scientific novelty of this research lies in the fact that for the first time, it analyzes a previously unexplored linguistic phenomenon - the linguistic, musical, and rock opera texts. The uniqueness of the study lies in the fact that the theoretical and practical aspects of the functioning of texts are analyzed, the previously existing interpretations of this concept are systematically considered and based on our interpretation of this term, for the first time, an analysis is carried out concerning the corresponding type of discourse

O movimento das coisas: Jodie Mack e as animações experimentais em looping

Since 2003, the english experimental director Jodie Mack has used primordial resources of cinema to produce cinematically powerful and entertaining works. With looping as the main artifice, her films explore different speeds, textures, colors, cuts, reflections, compositions and points of view. In movies like “Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project” (2013) and “The Grand Bizarre” (2018), the musical background is a constant. In the first, the director makes a rock opera adapting The Dark Side of The Moon to record the fall of the poster market, transforming the cultural products accumulated in her mother’s store into discard and consequently into raw material for her abstractions. The second is a roadmovie that moves around the raw material, mainly fabrics, tapestry pieces and maps that move around accompanied by music. Her movies stand out in contemporary experimental cinema for the uniqueness of having fun; experimentation is a great joke. Our aim is to analyze how Mack’s works dialogue with the looping of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey’s pre-cinema, with Stan Brakhage’s experimental provocations that encourage the exploration of movement, colors, textures and with animated GIFs. Despite the cinema’s proximity to GIF, it is not an easy task to point out names in contemporary cinema that relate to GIFs. Mack’s films are one of the few that can be seen as a series of GIFs and possibly the only one that, through a range of visual stimuli, manages to create movies as GIFs.

A GAME WITH MUSIC OR MUSIC WITH A GAME? ABOUT THE VIDEO GAME KARMAFLOW

Over 70 years ago, Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler philosophized about functional music in their programmatic script Composing for the Films. In spite of all the social criticism that the authors practiced with relish, it was already about the essential—the determination of a meaningful coexistence of synergetically connected art events. With the spread of video games, the question arises again and again: how to combine action and sound without falling prey to Mickey Mousing effect? As one of the youngest branches of music studies, ludomusicology describes a number of musical application scenarios, systematized according to effects and techniques. Their principles are comprehensible—under normal circumstances. With the Karmaflow—The Rock Opera Videogame, however, a project was started that leads to a new configuration between the media: in this game you play, in a manner of speaking, with or against the music itself. Because of its design, Karmaflow deserves to be considered on its own. Additionally, outside the subgroup of “music-based games”, heavy metal music is an exception among video games. The present essay illustrates the specific concept of the game which indeed can be placed in a range between video games and rock operas. The insights gained through (self-) observation are compared with the results of an exploratory survey. The survey was aimed at revealing the influence of sound on the gaming experience. The majority of respondents confirmed the connection between music and gameplay and the effect of musical characterization on some specific decisions. Test subjects, who, due to their preferences, belonged to the target group of game developers, judged differently than the other experiment participants.

ROCK OPERA GENRE AND ITS OUTSTANDING EXAMPLES IN THE MUSICAL CULTURE OF THE LAST THIRD OF THE XXTH CENTURY

The article reveals the features of rock opera as a genre of mass musical culture in the last third of the XXth century. On the example of two outstanding genre samples — "Jesus Christ Superstar" by E. Lloyd-Webber and T. Rice and "The Star and Death of Joaquin Murieta" by A. Rybnikov and M. Zakharov — the specifics of the plot interpretation, dramaturge organization, musical and expressive means and life forms of the work are considered. At the same time the author presents the background content of the two rock operas, the characteristics of their creators and the history of the first performance. The conclusion is drawn about their significance in modern mass musical culture. The media side of a rock opera is also emphasized, which tunes it to comparison with the art of cinema, establishing a connection between rock opera and musical, as one of the most popular and communicative genres of modern musical theater. The conclusions highlight the liveliness and innovation of the two works, which are an organic part of rock aesthetics. Both works introduce into the musical and poetic text "lexemes" the spoken language of youth as markers of the genre and attributes of belonging to rock culture. Until now, they are undisputed masterpieces of world popular music and stage culture.

The specifics of female characters embodiment in contemporary Ukrainian musicals and rock operas (on the example of Nataliya Sumska’s creativity)

Background. The creative mastery process of the musical and rock opera genres has become one of the urgent vocational training problems today considering the growing popularity of these genres both in the world and in Ukrainian musical culture. There is a need to investigate the methodological aspect of professional activity in this direction like a set of requirements for the modern actor working in the music-dramatic genre. The lack of specialized literature and scientific works which investigates the embodiment phenomenon of vocal and stage images by actors in contemporary Ukrainian musicals and rock operas raises an urgent need for its consideration. Phenomenological analysis of the vocal and stage creativity of the actress Nataliya Sumska, namely, her stage works in rock operas “Eneida by Serhii Bedusenko based on the poem-burlesque by I. Kotliarevsky, “Bila Vorona” “(The White Crow”) by Genadii Tatarchenko and Yurii Rybchynskyi and “Nezrivnianna” (“The Incomparable”) Musical, based on the famous play by Peter Quilter (the composer Ivan Nebesnyi) are the material of this study. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to investigate the performing principles and vocal techniques that contribute to the embodiment of contentemotional female images characteristics in contemporary musicals and rock operas on the example of Nataliya Sumska’s acting creativity. The results of the study. The success of the Nataliya Sumska stage activity is closely related to the actress’ high level of vocal skills. Didona’s role in the rock opera “Eneida” has required from the performer a whole range of professional skills, first of all, vocal – that is, acting universalism. The vocal and stage image created by Nataliya Sumska is realized through singing, which organically combines the traditions of folk-song performance with the best achievements of the national academic and variety performing arts. The dominance of “folk” color in the sound of the voice is one of the creative tasks that the author of the rock opera sets before the actress. The bright individual “synthesizing” vocal and performing style is the original combination of ethnic origin with jazz and pop rhythms and harmonies offered by the composer, made the unique image of Didona by N. Sumska’s performance. Thus, a perfect actress’s mastery of different singing styles and the ability to use her own voice to achieve high artistic output is of great value, as composers in rock operas and musicals are constantly performing acts of styling. In the role of Jeanne d’Arc from the Ukrainian rock opera by Genadii Tatarchenko and Yurii Rybchynskyi’s “Bila Vorona” (“The White Crow”) the main features of N. Sumska’s art were clearly revealed, such as: great tragedy, heroic pathos and pathetics combined with lyric scourge and poetic sorrow. The stage techniques, by which N. Sumska created the image of Jeanne, were: enhanced sound supply and high dynamic tone of performance, expedient use of registers, expanded palette of sound dynamics and its filing (“filer un son”); going beyond the range of sound characteristic of academic vocal performance, the use of different singing styles and techniques; skillful presentation of intonation recitation gradations (from whisper to cry); possession of sound amplification equipment; maintaining a vocal line, subject to any nature of sound production; finally, acting is the ability to convey the character of the heroine through the voice, facial expressions, gestures, to make the viewer feel the pain and joy of her soul. Thus, Nataliya Sumska is fully capable of using the necessary means of artistic expression, various methods of performance, revealing the semantic and emotional content of the stage image and the work as a whole. In the “Nezrivnianna” (“The Incomparable”) Musical Nataliya Sumska embodied the comedic image of an American pianist who believed in her talent as an opera singer and one of the earliest representatives of “outsider music”. The actress brilliantly demonstrated that she was able to sing both “strictly past the notes” and only in “disgusting” voice, as her role required. She did not only change her voice for the horrific performance of operatic classics, but she was able to convey faith and belief in her own success to her Florence heroine. The actress was able to achieve great artistic power in the embodiment of the image, first of all, thanks to the mastery of vocal technique, as different modes of the larynx, specific techniques: conscious oscillation of sound, different attack power, accentuation of individual sounds, etc. Conclusions. Considered the creating specifics of vocal and stage image in contemporary rock operas and musicals by actress Nataliya Sumska, we came to the conclusion that vocal performance in modern rock operas and musicals poses special requirements for actresses. Modern musicals and rock opera demonstrate all possible polystylistic and polygenre syntheses, including the incorporation of folk and academic elements, and some genres of light music. The vocal part is complicated by changes in priorities in harmony, which is represented mainly by dissonant sounds. Accordingly, the melody of rock operas and musicals today is filled with unconventional unexpected intonations and lines, characteristic of metrorhythmic constructions. Conversational intonations, variety of singing manners and vocal techniques that form the basis of modern musical performances help to emphasize the emotional lines of the work. The presence of conversational dialogues, dance episodes with specific plasticity, the use of elements of the musical language of other cultures, a wide style range (from folklore to avant-garde, from Baroque stylings to jazz and smash hit), features of singing with a microphone – all this requires knowledge of specific acting and choreographic techniques, a good mastery of vocal technique, that is, all that constitutes professional acting universalism.