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Idyllic Chronotope as One of the Principles of Organizing Time and Space: The Example of Handel’s “Alcina” Staged by Katia Korabelnik



Author(s)

Sofia Mazar

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2023.11.004

Jerusalem Lyric Opera Studio & Festival, Jerusalem, Israel
The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Jerusalem, Israel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

An operatic work is a complex assemblage of different arts. Space-time in an operatic work is organized as a set of scores of all participating arts and is based on the conventions of their chronotopes. Each score is part of the system. At the same time, it is also relatively independent and flexible and can become a leading component for building the structure of the work. The chronotope of an operatic piece has several levels: (1) A dramaturgical source (a musical score with a libretto) that creates the spatial-time system of the work. This is a musical and poetical text whose chronotope transfers it into a stage text, placing it as the chronotope of the performance. (2) A spatial-time-stage director system. A stage work is a material object and is also the original idea of its creator, their spiritual perception. Being so, we discover the dual reality—a physical space-time of the work and a metaphysical space-time of its idea. A spatial-time system is the stage language of the work, the coordination between its external and internal art form. The external form is a set of expressive representations and the internal form is a logical structure, the space-time of the director’s perception. (3) Spatial-time-singer system. The singer integrates into this system partially in a way that is conditioned by the parameters of the chronotope in the spatial-time system. (4) A time-spatial system—an observer. Here a synergistic situation is created in which the show at the time of its ending (disintegration) moves into the space-time of the viewer and changes their inner world. In the ever-growing mosaic of contemporary art, in a rich variety of different currents, there is a need to look for universal values—the fundamental things that produce a sense of uniformity and completeness of the artistic work. A temporal analysis, that is, the analysis of the chronotopes of an operatic work can become a starting point for different approaches that investigate the contemporary processes taking place in an operatic work, and can also show new directions in the development of the operatic genre itself.

chronotope, idyllic, opera, baroque

Psychology Research, November 2023, Vol. 13, No. 11, 537-541