Hudobné divadlo v priestore a čase Toto monotematické číslo časopisu musicologica.eu je venované problematike hudobného divadla v strednej Európe v 19. a 20. storočí. Ambíciou autorov jednotlivých príspevkov nebolo poňať vymedzenú tému synteticky, čo by bolo sotva možné vzhľadom na široké časové vymedzenie a koniec koncov aj na otvorenosť pojmu „stredná Európa“. Naším cieľom nebolo vyrozprávať celistvý…
Searching for Opera’sraisond’être: a Life Story of the “undead” Artistic Genre in Bratislava
The title of this essay is inspired by the publication Zápas o podobu a zmysel SND (Dokumenty SND, zv. 1) [The Fight for the raisond’être and Constitution of the Slovak National Theatre (Documents of the SNT, vol. 1)]. The “raisond’être of the SNT”, the existence of the SNT as a demonstration of a clearly delineated public interest, is a concept that has been gradually consolidating in the course of the theatre‘s history, the birth and first steps of which were more the manifestation of politics than the formulation of an authentic social “will to theatre” (Martin Bendik). The development of the SNT Opera and its audience was affected by two periods under totalitarian regimes: the years of the First Slovak State, and the period of the 1950s, although the influence of politics and ideology on opera mostly did not manifest itself in the form of censorship or bans. The repertoire as well as opera reception after 1948 reveal the residues of stereotypes of the bourgeois notion of opera, which implies an immensely apolitical character of this artistic genre. The sociological survey carried out in 1968–1969 under Michal Hruškovic was aimed at determining the causes of poor attendance of the Opera of the SNT; this survey remains the unique study of the social structure of the opera audience and the specific position of the opera in Bratislava, the city in which the social function of culture has been a typical “mixture” of stereotypes of inherited bourgeois culture (Bildung) and elements of younger ideologies, namely the nationalist ideology, in the course of the entire 20th century.
