Performing Art of Maria Gay: Following the Pages of Russian Musical Criticism and Memoiristics

Abstract

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.