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.

With One Look I’ll Be May

This chapter looks in greater detail at the career of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who commands many styles, freely moving from one to another within a single score. The Phantom Of the Opera (1986) dabbles in pastiche of vintage opera forms, yet its title song is disco. Evita (1978) opens with a choral requiem, which is dissonantly modern, but then Che Guevarra turns around and addresses the audience in rock. The through-sung scores set soothing melody right next to jagged recitative. Ultimately, Lloyd Webber's music is a paradox, and this is one reason why he has detractors. After Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and Evita, Lloyd Webber’s subsequent projects attracted intense interest. Many people regarded Cats (1982) as a folly. But Cats proved irresistible then and after, in part because it turned pop opera joyful after the hieratic ceremonies of its two founding titles. Superstar is not a comedy and Evita's “comedy” is actually bitter irony; but Cats is all for fun, tempered only by the occasional solemnity.

To Love Another Person Is To See the Face Of God

This chapter discusses the emergence of the through-song British musical, also known as “pop opera.” This can be dated from the afternoon of March 1, 1968, when parents (mainly mothers) of students at Colet Court School watched an end-of-term performance of a twenty-minute version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. By 1991, Lloyd Webber and Rice had officially created the first performance in the history of pop opera which was Jesus Christ Superstar (1971). Lloyd Webber's ability to compose consistently in a single voice, or to eclecticize, in other words, to teach the audience to navigate the action through musical signifiers is not appreciated enough. Tim Rice's ease in “conversationalizing” the bigger-than-life figures that pop opera delights in is similarly underrated, because he makes it look easy. The biggest hit in this period of musical history is Les Misérables (1985). This show's saga started when Alain Boublil sees Superstar and decides to write something comparable. It was written with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Intertextuality in T. Pratchett’s Novel Maskerade

The category of intertextuality and playing with the reader have become an integral part of mass literature in the era of postmodernism. The aim of this article is to analyse the intertextual inclusions in Maskerade (1995), a novel by Terry Pratchett, a British writer who achieved success in comic fantasy and is well-known for his book series Discworld and the use of different cultural references which play a crucial role in the construction of the storyline. The research refers to the original text of Maskerade, the primary precedent texts, i.e. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux and the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as several musical works of the last century. The distinctive features of the novel include a predominance of musical references over literary ones, which can be explained by the primary plot of the book developing on the stage of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House. In the very paratitle of the novel, the writer begins an intertextual game with the reader, hinting at the main narrative line, the duality and masquerade of what happens. All the plot-forming intertextual connections analysed in this article have no attribution and are expressed in the form of marked quotations, quasi-quotations, and allusions. However, taking into consideration “the white knowledge” and the readers’ horizon of expectations, Terry Pratchett reconsiders many images of the characters and seemingly well-known plot twists of The Phantom of the Opera. Furthermore, showing the backstage of the theatrical world with its prejudices and difficulties, the author thereby connects the real world with the secondary fictional world which turn out to be hardly distinguishable from each other.

T. S. ELIOT’S “OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS” IN THE CONTEXT OF “NURSERY RHYMES” TRADITION

This paper presents the results of a comparative study of the collection of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939) by T. S. Eliot and the collection of children’s verses Mother Goose Old Nursery Rhymes (published in 1760), compiled and illustrated by A. Rackham (1913). Consisting of 15 poems, and distinguished by its frivolity against the background of other works by Eliot, the cycle Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats has been overlooked by both Russian and foreign researchers for a long time. Recently a surge of interest in this book of verse has been provoked by the release of a feature film Cats (2019) based on the world-famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This fact as well as the lack of serious academic studies of Eliot’s book of verse has determined the urgency and novelty of this paper. It is also important to show the involvement of this segment of Eliot’s poetry into the English literary tradition. The aim of this research is to identify the influence of Victorian aesthetics of nonsense on the poetry of T. S. Eliot’s cycle. The method of comparative analysis has been chosen as the main research method. Besides, structural-semantic and linguistic-cultural methods have been used. In understanding and interpreting the term “tradition” the author relies on Eliot’s aesthetics, in which this concept is central. The terminological unit “nursery rhymes” is used in its original traditional meaning since its historical and cultural background disappears in any Russian translation or scholarly interpretation. In the course of work, certain features of nursery rhymes have been identified in the poetic texts by the great Modernist. The study of the specificity of this genre (the playful atmosphere of the text, the special rhythms and forms of coding historical events, animalistic perspectives, the use of various repetitions and imitations, the creation of author’s occasionalisms and unusual names of characters, etc.) confirms strong influence of the tradition of English nursery rhymes on T. S. Eliot’s works.

“We’re Not in Kansas Any More”

Chapter 8 explores three contrasting attempts to adapt the film for the theater. First, following the release of the MGM film, in 1942 the St. Louis Municipal Opera hoped to capitalize on the success of the movie by commissioning a stage production that incorporated the familiar songs. Second, in the mid-1980s, the Royal Shakespeare Company returned to the MGM film as the basis for a new stage adaptation. Though their version promoted the supposed authenticity of this approach, expanding the movie into a full theater piece nevertheless caused tensions between practice and nostalgia. Third, a generation later, Andrew Lloyd Webber reteamed with his best-known collaborator, Tim Rice, to write some new songs to interpolate into a new stage version. Here, the text was revised with a new audience and new era in mind: though the movie was celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, the new adaptation brought contemporary values, and therefore a shift of emphasis, to the beloved text. Each of the three adaptations had its pros and cons, though none could match the success of the original movie. This chapter therefore also serves to explore the problems of adapting screen musicals for the stage, as can also be seen from two other disappointing stage adaptations of MGM movies, Meet Me in St. Louis and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Losing My Timing This Late in My Career

By the early 1970s, Broadway music would be branded “middle of the road,” but the expressway of popular music left little, if any, room for the show music for an earlier or current generation. Various new teams and new songwriters attempted a cross-generational sound, a way of bringing rock-infused scores to Broadway: Burt Bacharach and Hal David, John Barry, Stephen Schwartz, and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Not all of their experiments were successful—either on the pop charts or on stage. Stephen Sondheim emerged as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his generation and, in the midst of commercial failure within the world of cast albums, Sondheim emerged with a hit song that eventually became a pop standard in an increasingly obstreperous time: “Send in the Clowns,” introduced as a crossover single by Frank Sinatra.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) and his Really Useful Group (founded 1977) have dominated British musical theatre since the 1970s, especially between 1981 and 2002. This critical survey of Lloyd Webber’s career discusses his self-understanding as a theatre composer; his development of an individual style in the late 1960s; his breakthrough success with Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and the significance of what the lyricist Tim Rice calls its ‘operatic form’; the continued artistic and commercial development of the composer’s career through Evita (1976), Cats (1981), Starlight Express (1984), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986); and his subsequent failure to produce further musicals of comparable popularity. The Phantom of the Opera is identified as the most personal of Lloyd Webber’s major successes and his obsessive, revisionary investment in Gaston Leroux’s novel is analysed with reference to both the 1986 musical and its badly misjudged sequel, Love Never Dies (2010).