Opera Criticism in Russia in the Early 21st Century: Constructing the (Non-) Soviet Style

Abstract

Opera criticism in post-Soviet Russia has had an almost 30-year history, which can be divided
chronologically into three periods. The first, spanning from the 1990s to the early 2000s, is considered
to be the brightest and most remarkable. During that period there emerged simultaneously two types
of musical criticism – the narrowly specialized and the universal – which have coexisted together.
The latter type, created by Piotr Pospelov and his colleagues and published by new Russian business
publishing houses (for example, the newspaper “Kommersant-Daily”), has become prevalent in
subsequent periods.
This type of musical newspaper journalism was addressed directly to the new audience of opera
fans, the new Russian intellectual elite which can be labelled as the Russian Europeans – in their
education, views and interests. A number of features have become normative for the New Russian
musical criticism (as Olga Manulkina and Pavel Gershenzon call it): a grotesque style, as expressed
by shocking headlines, the demythologization of composers and compositions, a widespread use of
mass genres, forms and comparisons in music stories, ironic subtext.
The discourse “music and politics” became the leading one in the reception of opera of that
time. In reviews of opera productions of the Soviet era (incidentally, not necessarily Soviet in their
style or ideology) the main elements of Soviet mass art are often mentioned – like Soviet songs
and films, symbols of totalitarian culture – sculpture and ideological materials. Numerous Soviet
stylistic features which are still well known and recognizable by readers are exploited in the style
and headings. The recent manifestation of the “Soviet” style in opera receptions is atomized and
fantastically synthesized with Soviet mass culture and fashion trends in the country – for instance,
with the cult of Western cinema and the influence of Russian television programmes.
It was this exact construction (or reconstruction) of “Soviet” stylistic features in the opera
criticism of the turn of the century that shaped the musical thinking and ideals of the “Millennials’”
generation in Russia.

Keywords: Opera, New Russian music criticism, Piotr Pospelov, receptions, cultural recycling,
Soviet culture.