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SOMETHING BEHIND OPERA REFORMS
Abstract
Composers who have not only created some new operatic forms but have also verbally expressed their respective ideas are understood as the opera reformers. Among them may be named Gluck, Wagner, and Debussy: the latter managed to show another possible path which, as a matter of actual practice, turned out to be different from that of Wagner. The great opera reform is also worth mention: that entails the grounding of the notions of prima pratica and seconda pratica by Vincenzo Galilei and Claudio Monteverdi. Bernd Zimmermann, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other representatives of the twentieth-century avant-garde have transformed musical theater in a radical way. However, the avant-garde itself has occurred to be such a powerful reform that, beside it, speaking about the reform of any genre would hardly make sense. The comparison of statements made by opera reformers of various epochs shows that they basically tried to make music express text and consolidate its unity with drama rather than to make music end in itself. Interestingly, though, the reformers have often been criticized precisely for what they themselves had criticized their predecessors: suffice to recall Wagner, who criticized long arias in the Italian opera, and then Debussy, who criticized Wagner for not using arias at all. The topical goal of music history should deal with consideration of the phenomenon of time in art, which serves as the most profound tool enjoying its two different appearances: scenic time and musical time — and this is precisely their non-coincidence that makes opera reforms unavoidable within the integrity of historical process. The following aspects of time tend to stand as some problematic “junctions”:  the present moment as the being of the art idea;  perception of time movement as the synthesis of the whole. The historical forms of opera and drama, considered in the context of these aspects of time, should highlight the worldview of every corresponding epoch in a clearer manner.
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