UDC 782
DOI: 10.36871/hon.202403097
Authors
Vasily V. Lukyanenko,
L. and M. Rostropovich Orenburg State Institute of Arts, Orenburg, 460000, Russian Federation
Abstract
The life and work of the famous Russian composer Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov have always been in the mainstream of musicological research, which does not lose its relevance even nowadays. It seems impossible to add anything new to this list. However, this judgement is deceptive, as the opera The Golden Calf vividly reveals facets of the composer’s talent that have not been noted before. The comic vision of the artistic images in The Golden Calf speaks of Khrennikov’s love of life, which in its essence is the most modern problem of our time — the loss of joy and the prospect of a “happy tomorrow”. During his long life, the composer expressed his talent in almost all musical genres. Perhaps that is why the complexity of life is juicy in this work: comedy and tragedy, the richness and poverty of human emotions, their poignancy and nakedness. Tikhon Nikolaevich expressed through music the whole palette of bright, deliberate and memorable images, filled with humour and satire on the one hand, and grotesque on the other. A characteristic feature of a great artist is the ability to embrace many musical genres with his talent, which is fully demonstrated in T. N. Khrennikov’s opera The Golden Calf.
Keywords
Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov, comic opera, The Golden Calf, I. Ilf and E. Petrov
