The Changing Face of Opera in America: Musical Theatre on the American Operatic Stage

To address the opera industry’s ongoing struggle to maintain self-sustaining business models, more and more major opera companies turn to musical theater to build audiences and revenue. This article identifies challenges successfully met by several specific opera companies, discusses opportunities for programming music theater on the operatic stage, including effects on the casting process, and looks toward a promising future that is inclusive of both opera and musical theater in one canon or repertoire.

Opera, Anti-opera, Anti-Anti-opera. On the Issue of the Musical Theatre's Evolution in the 1960s-1970s

Статья посвящена проблеме эволюции музыкального театра в 1960-1970-е годы. Появление в данный период целого ряда произведений, декларирующих деконструкцию, разрушение существующих канонов и традиций музыкально-театрального искусства дало начало диалектическому противостоянию традиционного оперного и нового антиоперного направлений. В статье предпринимается попытка осмыслить природу антиоперы и пришедшей ей на смену антиантиоперы, оценить их значение для развития нового музыкального театра, сформулировать ключевые особенности данных феноменов. The article is devoted to the problem of the musical theatre's evolution in the 1960s-1970s. The appearance of a number of works declaring a deconstruction of existing canons and traditions of the musical theatre gave rise to dialectical opposition between opera and anti-opera. An attempt is made to reflect on the nature of antiopera and anti-antiopera that replaced it, define their significance for the development of New Music Theater, and formulate the essential features of these phenomena.

The Rallying Call to Decolonize

When Okwui Enwezor gained world renown as artistic director of Documenta11 in 2002, his accomplishments as curator of contemporary African art were already well established. His In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940–Present, exhibition (1996) had the temerity to describe the intentional ways in which Africans shaped their own photographic representation in a medium whose history was as long and distinguished in Africa as in Europe. Enwezor’s 2001 exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, was a revelatory journey through the long process of colonial resistance and independence no less revolutionary for its astonishing range of content far beyond that of art objects, including film, music, theater, literature, and literature. In helming Documenta11, Enwezor not only included a historic number of non-white, non-European artists but also redefined the exhibition, before its opening in Kassel, by conceiving it as a final installment of several “platforms” staged worldwide. His were strategic, paradigmatic interventions engineered to globalize the art world, and they effectively amounted to acts of art-historical decolonization. Enwezor’s legacy is instructive. Achieving an inclusive and equitable art history that is sustainable requires decentralizing white, Eurocentric, male, cisgender, and heterosexual hegemony. In two of his final projects, large-scale solo shows of Frank Bowling and El Anatsui, exhibiting these artists on their own terms did just that. It is through his curatorial practice of art-world decolonization that Enwezor has issued a rallying cry. He has shown us the way forward.

African Women in Music, Theater, and Performance

While women in certain regions of Africa have always enjoyed relatively equal access to view performances and perform publicly, many have not always enjoyed the same access to public performances of their craft. The role of women in music, theater, and performance in Africa has been diminished often by its demotion to the lyrical performances of women to enliven life’s transitions, from celebration of births to rites-of-passage ceremonies, marriages, and funerals. However, African women have always instigated social and political protests through songs and musical performances, imitation, and meaning-charged lyrics. The record and achievements of women as individuals or band-associated public performers were available mostly from the middle of the 20th century. Many African women have broken barriers in the categories of music, theater, and performance through exceptional demonstration of their crafts and talents. Some of them, like Sonah Jobarteh and Jalil Baccar, mostly wielded influence within a specific region of the continent, while some, like Miriam Makeba and Cesária Évora, were well known throughout the continent and globally. These African women compelled the continent, and sometimes the world, to stop and ponder on their talents in the arts of music, theater, and performance.

AT THE ORIGINS OF THE UZBEK MUSIC THEATER (STUDIOS, TEACHERS, FIRST EXPERIMENTS: 1920-1930S)

This article is about the origins of the national opera that was born in Uzbekistan in the first half of the twentieth century. It also tells about the studio training of production and performing personnel for the national music scene within the framework of the Moscow, Baku studios, the Uzbek Opera Studio at the Moscow State Conservatory; about the first experiments of staging musical plays in the Uyghur Drama Troupe, the Concert and Ethnographic Troupe of M. Kari-Yakubov and further in the State Uzbek Musical Theater.

The Baroque Era (From the Mid-16th to the Mid-18th Century). Collisions of Contrasts (conclusion)

The essence of the cycle of essays published by the journal is that it provides with a maximal compactness of presentation a summary of the chief phenomena of world artistic culture, covered in general both from the point of view of the overall historical process and in relation to various types of artistic creativity (literature, the visual arts, architecture, music, theater and cinema). At the same time, the customary categorization according to national schools and the division into the separate arts with the genre specifi cation inherent in each of them is overcome, which meets the positive tendencies of globalization and provides a holistic view of artistic phenomena.

The Baroque Era (From the Mid-16th to the Mid-18th Century). Collisions of Contrasts

The essence of the cycle of essays published by the journal is that with a maximal compactness of presentation it provides a summary of the chief phenomena of world artistic culture, covered in general both from the point of view of the overall historical process and in relation to various types of artistic creativity (literature, the visual arts, architecture, music, theater and cinema). At the same time, the customary categorization according to national schools and the division into the separate arts with the genre specifi cation inherent in each of them is overcome, which meets the positive tendencies of globalization and provides a holistic view of artistic phenomena.

The Enlightenment (the Second Half of the 18th Century). Horizons of Light and Mind. First Essay

The essence of the series of essays published by the magazine is that with a maximum compactness of presentation it provides a summary of the main phenomena of world artistic culture covered in general, both from the point of view of the general historical process, and in relation to the various forms of art (literature, the visual arts, architecture, music, theater and cinema). At the same time, the usual categorization of national schools and division into separate types of art with the genre specification inherent in each of them is overcome, which meets the positive trends of globalization and provides a holistic view of artistic phenomena. The following artistic and historical periods are considered in a stepwise manner: the Ancient world, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque Period, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Post-Romanticism, the First Modern Period, the Second Modern Period, the Third Modern Period, the Postmodern Period, and as an afterword — “The Golden Age of Russian Artistic Culture”.