Page 134 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2019. Vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju - The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 3
P. 134
vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju
Cosma presents the interwar period as:
cruel, reactionary years, in which our country was turned fascist,
which led to the rise of the military-fascist dictatorship and the
dragging of Romania into the unlawful war against the Soviet Un-
ion. The Communist Party continuously fought against this poli-
cy, so hostile to the interests of the people, and organized the mass-
es in the struggle against dictatorship and against Hitler’s war. This
struggle ultimately led to armed insurrection and Romania’s liber-
ation from the fascist yoke, on August 23 1944.7
Interwar Romanian music, very clearly orientated towards Western
models, is analyzed by Cosma in comparison with the Soviet Union. Yet
even the reference to Soviet music gives way to a truncated understanding of
history, as the author makes no mention of the artistic pluralism of the 1920s,
and focuses only on the ascension of socialist realism, specific to the 1930s:
While in the Soviet Union, music moved ever more firmly towards
socialist realism […], in the West, as in Romania, the exponents
and products of the two cultures present in the Capitalist regime
faced each other: on the one hand, the bourgeois music systems and
movements changed with the fashion, slipping ever further towards
decadence, towards the rupture of art from life, towards formal-
ism; on the other hand there was realist music, faithful to progres-
sive traditions, close to the understanding of the masses and their
longings.”8
The ideological artifice of “progressive traditions,” through which past
works could be legitimated and appropriated is successfully employed by
Cosma in order to recover and render available some of the most relevant
works of Romanian opera and ballet, such as Enescu’s lyrical tragedy Oedip
[Oedipus], the most important Romanian interwar opera; Paul Constan-
tinescu’s O noapte furtunoasă [A Stormy Night], a memorable comic opera;
or Mihail Jora’s lyrical-satirical ballet La piață [At the Market Place]. In the
demolishing élan of the 1950s, these works and many others had been bit-
terly criticized, along with their creators.
With the same virtuosity with which he finds all kinds of ideological
“mistakes” in several older works, written according to esthetic principles
7 Cosma, Opera românească [Romanian Opera], vol. 2, 4.
8 Ibid., 9–10.
132
Cosma presents the interwar period as:
cruel, reactionary years, in which our country was turned fascist,
which led to the rise of the military-fascist dictatorship and the
dragging of Romania into the unlawful war against the Soviet Un-
ion. The Communist Party continuously fought against this poli-
cy, so hostile to the interests of the people, and organized the mass-
es in the struggle against dictatorship and against Hitler’s war. This
struggle ultimately led to armed insurrection and Romania’s liber-
ation from the fascist yoke, on August 23 1944.7
Interwar Romanian music, very clearly orientated towards Western
models, is analyzed by Cosma in comparison with the Soviet Union. Yet
even the reference to Soviet music gives way to a truncated understanding of
history, as the author makes no mention of the artistic pluralism of the 1920s,
and focuses only on the ascension of socialist realism, specific to the 1930s:
While in the Soviet Union, music moved ever more firmly towards
socialist realism […], in the West, as in Romania, the exponents
and products of the two cultures present in the Capitalist regime
faced each other: on the one hand, the bourgeois music systems and
movements changed with the fashion, slipping ever further towards
decadence, towards the rupture of art from life, towards formal-
ism; on the other hand there was realist music, faithful to progres-
sive traditions, close to the understanding of the masses and their
longings.”8
The ideological artifice of “progressive traditions,” through which past
works could be legitimated and appropriated is successfully employed by
Cosma in order to recover and render available some of the most relevant
works of Romanian opera and ballet, such as Enescu’s lyrical tragedy Oedip
[Oedipus], the most important Romanian interwar opera; Paul Constan-
tinescu’s O noapte furtunoasă [A Stormy Night], a memorable comic opera;
or Mihail Jora’s lyrical-satirical ballet La piață [At the Market Place]. In the
demolishing élan of the 1950s, these works and many others had been bit-
terly criticized, along with their creators.
With the same virtuosity with which he finds all kinds of ideological
“mistakes” in several older works, written according to esthetic principles
7 Cosma, Opera românească [Romanian Opera], vol. 2, 4.
8 Ibid., 9–10.
132
