Opera ballet ( French opera-ballet ) is a musical and theatrical genre that developed in France at the turn of the XVII - XVIII centuries and is characteristic of the court theater ("Royal Academy of Music") of this period .
Elements of the opera-ballet have long been prepared in the so-called court ballet ( French ballet de cour ) of the 16th century, in comedy-ballets created by Jean-Baptiste Lully together with Moliere , as well as in ballets and operas by Lully himself. At that time, ballet and opera still did not stand out in separate genres, and singing and dancing were combined in a single representation, while the dance dominated. The opera ballet is finally made out as a genre on the French opera stage after Lully in the works of Andre Cardinal-Detouch , and, most vividly, with Andre Campra in his “ Gallant Europe ” ( 1697 ), and especially, in the " " ( 1710 ).
Similar to the theme of “gallant festivals” in French Rococo painting, opera ballets are primarily colorful and decorative. Usually they consist of a number of paintings - (exits, fr. Entrėes ), almost unrelated in the plot, in which developed dance scenes are combined with arias , recitations , ensembles and other opera forms. The brightest examples of opera-ballet - “ Gallant India ” ( 1735 ), “ ” ( 1739 ) - were created by Jean-Philippe Rameau , who introduced into this genre the high drama of lyrical tragedy and deepened its character and decorativeness.
Subsequently, in the formation of opera and ballet as independent types of theatrical performance, the genre becomes obsolete. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries its individual samples reappeared, representing the unity of choreography and singing in the framework of a fantastic or mythological performance: The Bacchus Triumph by Dargomyzhsky ( 1848 ), The Villis by Puccini ( 1884 ), and Mlada by Rimsky-Korsakov ( 1890 ) , “The Birth of a Lyre ” by Roussel ( 1925 ), “ Theater of Miracles ” by Hentze ( 1948 , 1965 - second edition), “The Prussian Fairy Tale ” by Blacher ( 1950 ), “The Snow Queen ” by Rauchwerger ( 1965 ), “ David Sasunsky ” by Oganesyan ( 1976 ) and etc.
Literature
- Ecorcheville J., De Lulli and Rameau 1690-1730, P., 1906;
- Kretzschmar H., Geschichte der Oper, Lpz., 1919 (Russian transl. - Kretschmar G., History of opera, L., 1925);
- Masion P.-M., L'opera de Rameau, P., 1930;
- Anthony JK, French Opera-Ballet in the early 18th. century. Problems of definition and classification, "Journal of the American Musicological Society", 1965, v. 18, No. 2, p. 197-206.