The Metamodern Trends in the Contemporary Opera Productions. Towards New Expressiveness

Abstract

This paper focuses on the director's theater as an important stage in the evolution of the opera genre and at the same time an ambiguous cultural phenomenon. Due to the rapid growth of interest in opera in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the concept of director's opera, which owes its formation and flourishing to the postmodern condition, begins to spread in the West. At present the term director's opera is actively used in Russian art criticism. As a result, it was found that the majority of researchers of musical theater in their works associate this concept with the provocative nature of works and too speculative stage interpretations of operas, as well as apparent liberty in the treatment of classical heritage, leading to the destruction of the opera canon. Simultaneously, with the theoretical reflection of the phenomenon of director' opera, as a result of the major crises of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as fatigue from the corrosive, destructing irony of postmodernism, the concept of metamodernism appears. According to the theorists of metamodernism, the new cultural paradigm aims to recode modern culture through art, and music was the first to embrace metamodernism that later on penetrated and conquered various cultural spheres. Defending its social significance and vitality, opera theater, following other art forms, changes its aesthetics, demonstrating trends associated with metamodernism, for instance allows for unexpected collaborations that welcome very different people to shine their otherness. As a result of the study of literature and empirical materials, the author concludes that the outlined intensions, which appeared in the period 2016–2018, can be considered as significant examples of the penetration of metamodern trends in contemporary opera theater. As the examples, the writer considers production of Verdi's opera La Traviata by Wilson and Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake by Castellucci.