The Emergent Properties of the Opera Genre in the Contemporary Musical Context

Abstract

The article’s relevance is influenced by the 20th-21stcentury composers’ innovative opera approach, experimental theatre principles, and the use of untraditional subjects and plots in academic operas. The purpose of this study is to reveal the emergent properties of the opera genre in the context of the development of contemporary music art. The methodological framework is based on general scientific and special methods, including analysis and synthesis, a historical and systematic approach to the study of the opera genre in a contemporary musical context. The study reveals that the opera genre, encompassing both traditional and new trends, is characterized by a strong emphasis on visual perception, a strong entertainment function, a search for new performance forms, and the synthesis of various musical phenomena. Emergent properties in the opera genre are considered from various scientific perspectives, and various beliefs and statements of leading educators, musicians, and scientists are compared and analyzed. The practical significance of the study lies in developing of the modern direction of opera poetics theory and considering the theory of contemporary opera interpretation as a separate branch of contemporary performing art. This is related to the uniqueness and semantic palette of the opera variety, which helps to identify new emergent properties of the genre in line with contemporary traditions. The study can be useful in preparing lectures on performing arts history, opera theory, culturology, methodological work, and opera studies in higher music education in Ukraine.