About the Influence of the Performative Features of the Avant-garde Theater on Documentary Opera

Abstract

Documentary qualities in the art of music are among of the bright, interesting and
little researched phenomena of modernity. Having been generated in the sphere of cinema and
drama theater, the present tendency also became circulated in the sphere of musical theater. The
introduction of documentary innovative materials – verbal and audio – into the artistic context
of works written in the opera genre substantially transformed the traditional structure of musical
performance. The article ascertains that the source of such types of experimental attempts was
the elaboration of the avant-garde dramatic theater, whose producers made broad use of the
techniques of performative art. This became the artistic orientation for documentary musical
theater.
Analysis of the stage endeavors of theatrical producers Erwin Piscator, Giorgio Strehler,
Andrei Serban and Peter Sellars has made it possible to bring to light the vectors of impact of
avant-garde theater on the musical documentary theater, which broadly applied the principles of
performativity. Accentuation is made of the role of contemporary computer technologies, which
gave the opportunities to producers and composers to obtain an instrumentarium that is broad
in its artistic resources and inclination towards synthesis, to realize the performative forms of
presentation of musical theater. The new features include minimalistic scenography, political
allusions, the extension of time and space, and special forms of interaction with the audience. Their
appropriation by musical documentary theater proves the force of impact of avant-garde artistic
practices, which have greatly transformed opera traditions.

Keywords: documentary features, documentary opera, avant-garde theater, performative
practices