Henry Purcell’s «Dido and Aeneas» in performances of «choreographic theatre».
Last years the heightened interest in searches of new decisions of theatrical synthesis is observed. If earlier in such search a conductor or a stage director dominated, now the priority often passes to a stage designer or a choreographer. More and more often scientific texts use the concepts «theatre of the artist» and «choreo-graphic theatre». In addition, musical and theatrical searches of the last decades demonstrate the in-creased attention to the musical creativity of the composers of the Baroque and Classi-cism. Mostly on festival’ theatrical stages a new birth of works by H. Purcell, F. Cavalli, A. Vivaldi, G. F. Handel, J. Haydn and a number of lesser-known of their contempo-raries is observed. Their opera heritage more and more often attracts the attention not only of per-forming musicians, but also of directors, choreographers, stage designers and modern theatrical public. The music of the mentioned composers is actively reinterpreted in the tideway of theatrically-aesthetic searches, often acquiring a new functional significance. In a great measure this process applies to the Henry Purcell’s musical-theatrical works «Dido and Aeneas» (1689), «King Arthur» (1691), «The Faerie Queene» (1692), which the stage directors embodied especially often during the last fifty years. Among the performances of the last twenty years, the stage versions of «The Faerie Queene» in the English National Opera (1995) and «King Arthur» in the Vienna State Opera (2004) had a wide resonance. The presence of Purcell’s music in the space of musical theatre of the last decades is not limited by opera genre only. The directors-choreographers have recently showed a certain interest in instrumental music by Purcell. However, his opera «Dido and Aeneas» enjoys the greatest attention. For the last 15 years, this work was dramatized in almost 30 opera houses mostly in European cities. However, the specificity of the embodiment of Purcell’s music in theatrical performanc-es of the outlined period practically had not scientific comprehended. The purposeof present article is to reveal the peculiarities of scenic interpretations of Purcell’s musical works in the context of theatrical and aesthetic searches of the Eu-ropean theatre of the end of ÕÕ – the beginnings of ÕÕ² centuries. The object of the researchis Henry Purcell’s opera creativity and functioning of such in the musical and theatrical practice of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The subject of researchis the peculiarities of the musical and scenic interpreta-tions of Henry Purcell’s operas in the theater of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, first of all, the choreographic stage versions of the opera «Dido and Aeneas». The scientific novelty of the study lies in revealing of the specifics of the new approach-es in interpreting of Henry Purcell’s opera heritage by theatrical performers over the past decades, taking into account the changes in the theatrical and aesthetic reference points. This research notes the strengthening of choreographic and plastic components in theatrical synthesis of opera performances, when the choreographers assume the func-tions of the director, when they introduce the choreographic doublers of opera characters into the theatrical text of opera performance. Choreography often combines an archaic statics with the dynamics of silent cinema moves and even the elements of the language of deaf-mutes. The practices of operating by Purcell’s music mastered by choreographers as «a building material» for the creation of new meanings of theatrical text became an exam-ple for opera stage directors also. Such liberal usage of his musical scores stems from the fact that unlike the «Mozart’s theatre» or the «Rossini’s theatre», the «Purcell’s theatre» has not acquired the significance of an autonomous phenomenon. Also, the traditions of performing Purcell’s musical and theatrical works are not sustainable. Therefore, the stage directors often should to follow the path either artistic style reconstruction, or use already approved models, which endow Purcell’s operas an universal sounding. Mark Morris, Erik Voss, Deborah Warner and Sasha Valtz became the creators of the most interesting «choreographic» concepts of the Henry Purcell’s opera «Dido and Aeneas». The proposed visually-choreographic planes, unexpected visual transformations of characters are aimed to place important dramaturgic accents in performance. Such fasci-nation with the visualization of the text, the dominance of spectacularity co-ordinates in general with the theory of F. Jameson’s «video-text». As a result,we note that Henry Purcell’s musical texts has proved to be actual for musical theatre of the end of the ÕÕ – the beginnings of the ÕÕ² centuries and more and more actively they take root into the musical-theatrical practice. At the same time, not only the musical and theatrical works of the English author, but also his instrumen-tal music one select for the creation of a musical-theatrical performance. Particularly the «choreographic theater» is active in this regard. Choreographic practice of the last decades has proposed quite different variants of operating with the texts of the English composer, although the intertextual approach remains decisive. On the intertextual basis, also, the overwhelming majority of the Purcell’s opera works stagings are embodied. The visually plastic components of a spectacle (primarily choreographic and scenographic) are the most active in this plane. Dynamization of the visual series, careful detailing of plastic art elements, utter relaxedness and freedom of scenic movement, strengthening the role of the light and colour dramaturgy of a performance, the increasingly active usage of cinematographic expressive tools and computer special effects proved to be dominating in the creation of theatrical synthesis. The modus operandi for the Purcell’s music implemented and fixed by choreographers called into existence new shades of meaning in the semantic structure of theatrical text, thanks to which the musical-theatrical performance is perceived as a postmodern artistic text in a free playing field.