“Model Opera” of the 20th Century in Chinese Musical Culture

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of studying the conditions of development of musical culture in China, in particular, the creation of the twentieth-century model opera, as a result of the synthesis of the East-West arts. The purpose of this article is to determine the components of the opera model and to indicate the prerequisites for its creation. The research methodology is based on the use of the hermeneutic-comparative method, which allows studying the model of Chinese opera in accordance with the conditions of the historical development of musical culture, as well as general scientific methods of analytical and historical-descriptive content, which formed, among other things, the methodological foundations of the art and cultural studies accepted for the study to understand the patterns and generalisations in accordance with the definition of the popularity of the twentieth-century opera model in Chinese culture. The scientific novelty lies in the universalisation of approaches to the synthesis of art in the East-West context and the study of the peculiarities of the existence of vocal and stage art in China as a component of the country's political programme of development and as a carrier of ideology. Conclusions. It has been determined that the performing tradition and functioning of vocal and stage art in China has a synthetic character, which took shape in the 19th century, but became active in the 20th century. The concept of a model opera came into use as an exemplary component of vocal and stage art that reflected political views and was also a carrier of the country's ideology. The creation of a number of operas based on the same model did not limit the development of Chinese musical culture, but rather created the conditions for the formation of a completely individual, unique national genre, which was embodied in a kind of model opera with its numerous experiments, but at the same time, some of its initiatives were distilled and even canonised into semantic units, performance practices, and norms of musical structure.

Key words: model opera, Chinese music, vocal and stage performance, East-West, ideology.