VAUDEVILLE(French vaudeville), a genre of a light comedy play or performance with an entertaining intrigue or anecdotal plot, accompanied by music, verses, dances.

Vaudeville arose and took shape in France (in fact, the name itself comes from the valley of the Vir River in Normandy - Vau de Vire - where the folk songwriter Olivier Basselin lived in the 15th century). In the 16th century "Vaudevilles" were called derisive city street songs-couplets, as a rule, ridiculing the feudal lords, who became the main enemies of monarchical power in the era of absolutism. In the first half of the 18th century vaudeville began to be called verses with a repeating refrain, which were introduced into fairground performances. At that time, the genre was defined in this way: “a performance with vaudeville” (i.e., with verses). By the middle of the 18th century. vaudeville emerged as a separate theatrical genre.

Early vaudeville is closely associated with synthetic fairground aesthetics: buffoonery, pantomime, eccentric characters of the folk theater (Harlequin, etc.). Its distinguishing feature was topicality: couplets were performed, as a rule, not to original music, but to familiar popular melodies, which undoubtedly made it possible to prepare a new performance in a very short time. This gave vaudeville extraordinary mobility and flexibility - it is no coincidence that the first flowering of vaudeville falls on the years of the French bourgeois revolution (1789-1794). The possibility of an immediate response to current events made vaudeville an agitational tool of revolutionary ideology. After the revolution, vaudeville loses its pathos and topical sharpness; however, its popularity does not fall, but, on the contrary, it increases. It is in vaudeville that a passion for jokes, puns, wit is manifested, which, according to A. Herzen, "is one of the essential and beautiful elements of the French character." By the early 1790s, the popularity of vaudeville in France was so great that a group of actors from the Comedie Italienne theater opened the Vaudeville Theater (1792). Following him, other vaudeville theaters were opened - the Troubadours Theatre, Montansier Theatre, etc. And the genre itself gradually begins to penetrate into theaters of other genres, accompanying the productions of "serious" plays. The most famous French vaudeville authors are Eugene Scribe (who wrote more than 150 vaudevilles independently and in collaboration with other writers in the 18th century) and Eugene Labiche (19th century). It is noteworthy that the vaudevilles of Scribe and Labish retain their popularity at the present time (Soviet television film straw hat based on the play by E.Labish, viewers have been watching with pleasure for more than a dozen years).

French vaudeville gave impetus to the development of the genre in many countries and had a significant influence on the development of European comedy in the 19th century, not only in dramaturgy, but also in its stage embodiment. The main principles of the genre's structure - rapid rhythm, ease of dialogue, live communication with the audience, brightness and expressiveness of characters, vocal and dance numbers - contributed to the development of a synthetic actor who owns the techniques of external reincarnation, rich plasticity and vocal culture.

In Russia, vaudeville appeared at the beginning of the 19th century as a genre that developed on the basis of the comic opera. A. Griboedov, A. Pisarev, N. Nekrasov, F. Koni, D. Lensky, V. Sollogub, P. Karatygin, P. Grigoriev, P. Fedorov and others contributed to the formation of the Russian drama school of vaudeville. stage history of Russian vaudeville. A galaxy of brilliant Russian comedians is widely known, for whom vaudeville was the basis of the repertoire: N. Dur, V. Asenkova, V. Zhivokini, N. Samoilov, etc. However, the largest actors worked in vaudeville with great pleasure and no less success. realistic direction: M.Schepkin, I.Sosnitsky, A.Martynov, K.Varlamov, V.Davydov and others.

However, by the end of the 19th century. vaudeville practically disappears from the Russian stage, supplanted both by the rapid development of the realistic theater and, on the other hand, by the no less rapid development of the operetta. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps the only notable phenomenon in this genre were ten one-act plays by A. Chekhov ( Bear,Sentence,Anniversary,Wedding and etc.). Despite the rejection of traditional couplets, Chekhov retained the typically vaudeville structure of his one-act plays: paradoxicality, swiftness of action, unexpected denouement. Nevertheless, in the future, A. Chekhov departs from the vaudeville tradition, in his later plays developing the dramatic principles of a completely new type of comedy.

Some revival of the Russian vaudeville tradition can be found in 1920–1930, when A. Faiko worked in this genre ( Teacher Bubus), V. Shkvarkin ( Alien child), I. Ilf and E. Petrov ( Strong feeling), V. Kataev ( Squaring the circle) and others. However, further development in its pure form, vaudeville did not receive, in the 20th century. other, more complex comedy genres were much more popular - socially accusatory, eccentric, political, "gloomy", romantic, fantastic, intellectual comedy, as well as tragicomedy.

Tatyana Shabalina

Vaudeville has been called "the heart of American show business" and has been one of the most popular forms of entertainment in North America for several decades. From the early 1880s to the 1930s in the United States and Canada, "vaudeville" refers to theatrical variety performances (music hall and circus kind). Each such performance was a set of separate performances of the most diverse genres of actors, not connected by any common idea: popular and classical musicians, dancers, trainers, magicians, acrobats, jugglers, comedians, imitators, masters of burlesque, - included “staged song” numbers, sketches and skits from popular plays, demonstration performances of athletes, minstrels, lecturing, demonstration of all kinds of “celebrities”, freaks and freaks, as well as film screenings.

In Russia

“... Do you want to listen Pretty vaudeville? and Count Sings...

The next stage in the development of vaudeville is "a little comedy with music", as Bulgarin defines it. This vaudeville has been especially popular since about the 20s of the 19th century. Bulgarin considers Shakhovsky's "Cossack Poet" and "Lomonosov" Shakhovsky to be typical examples of such vaudeville.

“The Cossack poet,” writes F. Vigel in his Notes, “is especially notable for the fact that he was the first to take the stage under the real name of vaudeville. This endless chain of these light works stretched from him.

Criticism

It was common for vaudevilles to be translated from French. The “reworking into Russian manners” of French vaudeville was limited mainly to the replacement of French names with Russian ones. N.V. Gogol in 1835 puts it in his notebook: “But what happened now, when a real Russian, and even a somewhat stern and distinctive national character, with its heavy figure, began to imitate the shuffling of a petimeter, and our obese, but a quick-witted and intelligent merchant with a broad beard, who knows nothing on his leg but a heavy boot, would instead put on a narrow slipper and stockings à jour, and the other, even better, would leave in his boot and become the first pair in a French quadrille . But almost the same is our national vaudeville.

“... six of us, looking - vaudeville blind, The other six set to music, Others clap when they give it ... "

The most popular authors of vaudeville in the 19th century were: Shakhovskoy, Khmelnitsky (his vaudeville "Castles in the Air" survived until the end of the 19th century), Pisarev, Koni, Fedorov, Grigoriev 1st, Grigoriev 2nd, Solovyov [ambiguous reference], Karatygin ( author of "Vitsmundir"), Lensky, Korovkin and others.

Sunset

The penetration of operetta from France into Russia in the late 1860s weakened the passion for vaudeville, especially since all sorts of political impromptu (of course, within the limits of very vigilant censorship), gag and especially topical (in the same vaudeville type) couplets were widely practiced in the operetta. Without such verses, the operetta was not conceived at that time. Nevertheless, vaudeville has been preserved in the repertoire of the Russian theater for quite a long time. Its noticeable decline begins only in the eighties of the XIX century. However, during this period, brilliant examples of the genre of vaudeville were created - in particular, the joke plays by A.P. Chekhov "On the dangers of tobacco", "Bear", "Proposal", "Wedding", "Jubilee".

In the same period (the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century), vaudeville occupies a large place in the national dramaturgy of other peoples that inhabited the Russian Empire, in particular Ukrainian and Belarusian - “Where there is sausage and charm, there will be forgotten swara”, “Fashionable” by M. P. Staritsky, “Toward the World” by L. I. Glibov, “According to the Revision”, “Zalets of Sotsky Musiy”, “For the Orphan and God with Kalita”, “Invasion of the Barbarians” by M. L. Kropivnitsky, “On the First Party” C V. Vasilchenko, “According to Muller”, “Patriots”, “Patriots” by A. I. Oles, “Pinsk nobility” by V. Dunin-Martinkevich, etc.

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Notes

Literature

  • Beskin E. History of the Russian theater. - M., .
  • Beskin E. Nekrasov - playwright // Worker of education. . No. 12.
  • Warneke B.V. History of the Russian theater. Kazan, . Part II.
  • Vigel F. F. Notes. M., . T.I.
  • Vsevolodsky-Gerngross. History of the Russian theater: in 2 vols. - M., .
  • Gorbunov I. F. Lensky, Dmitry Timofeevich // Russian antiquity. . T. 10.
  • Grossman L. Pushkin in theater chairs. - L. .
  • Ignatov I. N. Theater and audience. M., . Part I
  • Izmailov A. Fyodor Koni and the old vaudeville // Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters. . T 3.
  • Tikhonravov N. S. M. S. Shchepkin and N. V. Gogol // Artist. . Book. v.
  • Shchepkin M.S. Notes, letters and stories of MS Shchepkin. SPb., .

Links

  • Korovyakov D. D.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

The article uses text from the Literary Encyclopedia 1929-1939, which has passed into the public domain, since the author is Em. Beskin - died in 1940.