Abstract:

This article examines the opera music by P.I. Tchaikovsky from the point of view of its Christian orientation as a leading trend in the development of the national opera style of the 19th century and the manifestation of liturgical symbolism in it at different levels of the musical and dramatic whole. Most of the opera compositions of the composer are investigated in the context of the manifestation of iconic elements of Christian culture in them, which is common to Western and Eastern European, with a later branching into two main branches: Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The main liturgical symbols in the drama and musical fabric of opera compositions are highlighted, their gradual increase in each subsequent opera composition by P. Tchaikovsky is noted, in connection with the composer's search for spiritual truths and his appeal to certain subjects, which became the basis for the libretto of opera compositions. The greatest attention is paid to the composer's late operas: “The Maid of Orleans” and “Iolanta”, as compositions with the most pronounced symbolism of the Christian cultural tradition. The question of the manifestation of liturgical symbolism at different levels is revealed: from the general dominant idea of the composition, which can be defined as the main line of drama, its deep focus, to more particular ones, through certain dramatic, stylistic, musical techniques and verbal texts, to musical and intonational formulas, intonation stable complexes, which over time received the status of a symbol, a certain sign of a complex expression of the liturgical musical and intonational, verbal and semantic field, became rhetorical figurations, such as “Rest with the Saints” in the Orthodox tradition and “Dies irea” in the Catholic.

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