Performing Art of Maria Gay

One of the most important tendencies of development of opera theater at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is the fixation on “the truth of life” – a convincing recreation of the emotions and inner experience of the characters in conjugacy with the veracity of stage positions and situations. The aforementioned tendency acquired a full-scale manifestation in the performing activities of a number of celebrated performing musicians who aspired to achieve the maximal “veracity” of well-known operas. A vivid confirmation to the asserted is the artistic biography of Spanish singer Maria Gay (mezzo-soprano, 1879–1943). Her performance renditions of the leading parts in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, Camille Saint-Saens, Pietro Mascagni and Jules Massenet constantly attracted the attention of connoisseurs of the art of opera and professional musicians to themselves. The culmination of Maria Gay’s performance activities is perceived to be the innovative interpretation of the part of Carmen in Georges Bizet’s opera with the same name, which is presently acknowledged as a milestone event in the history of 20th century art of the opera stage. An analytical examination of publications of Russian musical criticism of the time period from the 1900s to the 1920s and memoir testimonies makes it possible to characterize certain substantial aspects of the aforementioned interpretative rendition – an exceptional diversity of timbral and phonic “nuancing” of the vocal part, the tightest interconnection of the latter with the choreography of the corresponding role, formation of “plastic counterpoints” to the mise-en-scenes in the “secondary” episodes, etc. At the same time, parallels are discovered between Maria Gay’s “experiments” and the artistic processes predominating in the “light genre” musical theater and the popular art of the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. Keywords: operatic-theatrical performance at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Maria Gay, Bizet’s “Carmen,” “light-genre” musical theater, art of popular music

Art · Art history · Criticism · Literature · Musical · Visual arts · Asian Culture and Media Studies