Vaudeville (French: vaudeville) - comedy play with verse songs and dances. The name comes from the French “val de Vire” - Vire Valley. Vir is a river in Normandy. IN XVII century In France, songs known as “Chanson de val de Vire” became widespread. They are attributed to the folk poets of the 15th century - Olivier Basselin and Le Goux.
But most likely this is just a collective designation for a special genre of a simple, simple, humorous song folk character, light in melodic composition, mockingly satirical in content, and in origin connected with the villages of the Vir Valley. This can explain the further transformation of the name itself - from “val de Vire” to “voix de ville” (“voices of the city”).
In the second half of the 17th century, small theatrical plays appeared in France, introducing these songs during the action and from them they themselves received the name “vaudeville”. And in 1792, even a special “Théâtre de Vaudeville” - “Vaudeville Theater” was founded in Paris. Of the French vaudeville actors, Scribe and Labiche are especially famous.
In Russia, the prototype of vaudeville was a small comic opera of the late 17th century, which remained in the repertoire of the Russian theater by the beginning of the 19th century. These include Knyazhnin’s “Sbitenshchik”, Nikolaev’s “Guardian-Professor” and “Misfortune from the Carriage”, Levshin’s “Imaginary Widowers”, Matinsky’s “St. Petersburg Gostiny Dvor”, Krylov’s “Coffee House”, etc.
V. Ablesimov's opera “The Miller-Sorcerer, the Deceiver and the Matchmaker” (1779) was a particular success. “This play,” says the “Dramatic Dictionary” of 1787, “aroused so much attention from the public that it was played many times in a row... Not only from national audiences, but also foreigners were quite curious.”
In Pushkin’s “Count Nulin” the definition of vaudeville is also associated with the concept of aria, opera:
"...Would you like to listen
A charming vaudeville?" and the Count
The next stage in the development of vaudeville is “a little comedy with music,” as Bulgarin defines it. This vovedil has become especially widespread since about the 20s of the last century. Bulgarin considers Shakhovsky’s “The Cossack Poet” and “Lomonosov” to be typical examples of such vaudeville.
“The Cossack poet,” writes F. Wigel in his “Notes,” is especially noteworthy for the fact that he was the first to appear on stage under the real name of vaudeville. From him came this endless chain of these light works.”
Among the noble-guard youth early XIX centuries, it was considered a sign of “good form” to compose a vaudeville for a benefit performance of this or that actor or actress. And for the beneficiary this was beneficial, because it also implied some “propaganda” on the part of the author for the upcoming benefit collection. Later, even Nekrasov “sinned” with several vaudeville acts under the pseudonym N. Perepelsky (“You can’t hide an awl in a sack, you can’t keep a girl in a sack”, “Feoklist Onufrievich Bob, or a husband is out of his element”, “This is what it means to fall in love with an actress”, "Actor" and "Granny's Parrots").
Vaudevilles were usually translated from French. “Adaptation of French vaudevilles to Russian customs was limited mainly to the replacement of French names with Russian ones. N.V. Gogol wrote in his notebook in 1835: “But what happened now when a real Russian, and even somewhat stern and distinguished by his unique national character, with his heavy figure, began to imitate the shuffling of the petimeter, and our corpulent, but a shrewd and intelligent merchant with a wide beard, who knows nothing on his foot except a heavy boot, would instead put on a narrow shoe and stockings à jour, and, even better, would leave the other one in the boot and become the first pair in the French quadrille . But our national vaudevilles are almost the same.”
Belinsky’s verdict on Russian vaudevilles is just as harsh: “Firstly, they are basically adaptations of French vaudevilles, therefore, the couplets, witticisms, funny situations, the beginning and the denouement - everything is ready, you just know how to use it. So what happens? This lightness, naturalness, liveliness, which involuntarily captivated and delighted our imagination in French vaudeville, this wit, these sweet nonsense, this coquetry of talent, this play of the mind, these grimaces of fantasy, in a word, all this disappears in the Russian copy, and only heaviness remains , awkwardness, unnaturalness, tension, two or three puns, two or three equivocations, and nothing more.”
Secular vaudeville theatergoers usually cooked up very simple recipe. Griboyedov’s Repetilov (“Woe from Wit”) also spoke about him:
"...six of us, lo and behold, they're turning out a vaudeville act,
The other six put music to music,
Others clap when they give it..."
There are indications that Pushkin, meeting the requests of some friends, paid tribute to the custom of the then high-society dandies, although the texts of Pushkin’s vaudeville couplets have not been established with certainty.
Usually vaudeville poems were such that, with all condescension, they can only be called rhyming.
The passion for vaudeville was truly enormous. For October 1840 in St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater Only 25 performances were staged, of which almost every one, in addition to the main play, included one or two vaudevilles, but ten performances were also composed exclusively of vaudevilles. Herzen, looking forward to the arrival of M. S. Shchepkin in London, remembers (in a letter to M. K. Reichel) not him big roles, and the vaudeville chorus:
"Chuk-chuk, Tetyana,
Chernobrov Kokhan."
Shchepkin himself played in vaudeville quite willingly. They occupied a very prominent place in his repertoire. Going on tour to St. Petersburg in 1834, he sent Sosnitsky his repertoire, where, along with “Woe from Wit,” there are a lot of vaudevilles.
From about the 1840s. in vaudeville, an element of topicality and polemic begins to noticeably emerge, either in the text, or in the form of acting gags and couplets, and this has an effect on the public big success. Of course, topicality in Nicholas’s times could not go beyond the limits of purely literary or theatrical anger (and then carefully), everything else was “strictly prohibited.” In Lensky’s vaudeville, for example, “In people, an angel is not a wife, at home with her husband it’s Satan,” the Wimp sings:
Here, for example, is an analysis of Polevoy’s Play - Both the author and the actor won’t understand a word here...
Particular success fell on Lensky’s five-act vaudeville “Lev Gurych Sinichkin or the Provincial Debutante,” adapted from the French play “The Father of the Debutante.” It remained in the theater repertoire until the beginning of the 20th century, although, of course, it was already devoid of any topicality (of which there was a lot in it), but it still did not lose its significance as a picture of the theatrical morals of that time. In the 1840s another special genre vaudeville "with disguises". In them, the young actress Asenkova, praised by Nekrasov, was a resounding success. The most popular vaudeville authors were: Shakhovskoy, Khmelnitsky (his vaudeville “Castles in the Air” lasted until late XIX century), Pisarev, Koni, Fedorov, Grigoriev, Soloviev, Karatygin (author of “Vitsmundir”), Lensky and others.
The penetration of operetta into Russia from France 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), ad-libs and especially topical (in the same vaudeville type) couplets were widely practiced in operetta. Operetta was unimaginable at that time without such couplets. But nevertheless, vaudeville remains in the repertoire of the Russian theater for quite a long time. Its noticeable decline begins only in the eighties of the 19th century.
Bibliography
To prepare this work, materials from the site http://ru.wikipedia.org were used
What is "Vaudeville"? How to spell this word correctly. Concept and interpretation.
Vaudeville VAUDEVILLE. Vaudeville is a dramatic encounter in a comedic sense (see comedy). If in a comedy the dramatic struggle should not be cruel, then this is still in to a greater extent applicable to vaudeville. Here, usually, a comedic violation of some very minor social norm is depicted, for example, the norm of hospitality, good neighborly relations, etc. Due to the insignificance of the violated norm, vaudeville is usually reduced to a sharp short collision - sometimes to one scene. V. Volkenshtein. \ History of Vaudeville. The etymology of this word (vaux-de-Vire, Vire Valley) gives an indication of the initial origin of this type of dramatic creativity (the city of Vire is located in Normandy); Subsequently, this word was interpreted through distortion as voix de ville - village voice. Vaudeville began to be understood as such works in which the phenomena of life are defined from the point of view of naive village views. The light nature of the content is distinctive feature vaudeville The creator of vaudeville, who characterizes these works in terms of their content, was French poet 15th century Le Goux, who was later confused with another poet Olivier Basselin. Le Goux published a collection of poems, Vaux de vire nouveaux. These light comic songs in the spirit of Le Goux and Basselin became the property of the broad urban masses in Paris, thanks to the fact that they were sung on the Pont Neuf bridge by wandering singers. In the 18th century, Lesage, Fuselier and Dorneval, in imitation of these vaudeville songs, began to compose plays of similar content. The vaudeville text is accompanied by music from the beginning of the second half of the XVIII century. Musical performance Vaudeville was facilitated by the fact that the entire text was written in verse (“The Miller” by Ablesimov). But soon, during the actual performance of vaudeville, the artists began to make changes to the text in prosaic form - improvisations on the current issues of the day. This gave the authors the opportunity to alternate verse with prose. From this time on, vaudeville began to branch into two types: vaudeville itself and operetta. Vaudeville is dominated by Speaking, and in operetta - singing. However, operetta began to differ in its content from vaudeville. It parodies various phenomena of life. This is Khmelnitsky’s operetta (beginning of the 19th century): “Greek Nonsense or Iphigenia in Tauris” and the later ones: “Orpheus in Hell”, “Beautiful Helen”, “Daughter of the Market”, “Songbirds”, “Geisha”, etc. After this differentiation of vaudeville, what remains behind it is first a humorous depiction of the life of the urban class in general, and then the middle and petty bureaucrats. The ease of content of vaudeville was also facilitated by the fact that it was compiled on occasion for a benefit performance of an artist or actress, and it was staged for the most part after a serious drama or tragedy. This determined the insignificance of its volume, although not only three-act vaudevilles are known, but even five-act ones (Lensky’s vaudeville of 5 acts - “Lev Gurych Sinichkin or the Provincial Debutante”). The insignificance of vaudeville required a special condensation of the comic element compared to comedy. Therefore, the hyperbolic nature of the comic led to the rapid development of action. At first, vaudeville was written in verse, then poetry began to alternate with prose dialogues - with the indispensable repetition of the same couplets addressing the public; often the verses themselves were called vaudevilles. IN later time verses and music became optional. Our most remarkable vaudeville artists were Khmelnitsky, Shakhovskoy, Pisarev, Polevoy, Karatygin II and others. In the era of reforms, vaudeville lost its importance, giving way to operetta. In most cases, vaudevilles were translated plays, often from French, but foreign names were often remade into the Russian style. Chekhov wrote his jokes in vaudeville form: “The Bear” and “The Proposal.” Iv. Lyskov.
Vaudeville- VAUDEVILLE m. French. a dramatic spectacle with songs, singing, and opera and operetta are all set to music... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary
Vaudeville- Franz. the word Vaudeville comes from the word vaux-de-Vire, i.e. the valley of the city of Vire in Normandy, the place of the river... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
Vaudeville- (French vaudeville) a light comedy play with verse songs and dances. Homeland of V. - France... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Vaudeville- VAUDEVILLE, vaudeville, m. (French vaudeville) (theater). Comic play of a farcical nature, original. with... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
Vaudeville- m. 1. Short dramatic work light genre with entertaining intrigue, couplet songs... Efremova's Explanatory Dictionary
Vaudeville- VAUDEVILLE (French vaudeville, from vau de vire, literally - the valley of the Vire River in Normandy, where in the 15th ...
Vaudeville
Vaudeville
VAUDEVILLE. - The word comes from the French “val de Vire” - Vir Valley. Vir is a river in Normandy. In the 17th century, songs known as “Chanson de val de Vire” became widespread in France. They are attributed to the folk poets of the 15th century - Olivier Basselin and Le Goux. But most likely this is simply a collective designation for a special genre of a simple, unpretentious, humorous folk song, light in melodic composition, mockingly satirical in content, and in origin associated with the villages of the Vir Valley. This can explain the further transformation of the name itself - from “val de Vire” to “voix de ville” (“village voice”). In the second half of the 17th century, small theatrical plays appeared in France, introducing these songs during the action and from them they themselves received the name “vaudeville”. And in 1792, even a special “Theater de Vaudeville” - “Theater V.” - was founded in Paris. Of the French vaudeville actors, Scribe and Labiche are especially famous.
In our country, the prototype of V. was a small comic opera of the late 17th century, which remained in the repertoire of the Russian theater by the beginning of the 19th century. This includes Knyazhnin’s “Sbitenshchik”, Nikolaev’s “Guardian-Professor” and “Misfortune from the Carriage”, Levshin’s “Imaginary Widowers”, Matinsky’s “St. Petersburg Gostiny Dvor”, Krylov’s “Coffee House”, etc. Particular success had an opera-V. Ablesimova - “Miller-sorcerer, deceiver and matchmaker” (1779). “This play,” says the Dramatic Dictionary of 1787, “aroused so much attention from the public that it was played many times in a row... Not only from national audiences, but also foreigners were quite curious.” In Pushkin’s “Count Nulin” the definition of V. is still associated with the concept of aria, opera:
"...Would you like to listen
Delightful vaudeville? and count
Sings...
The next stage of V.'s development is “a little comedy with music,” as Bulgarin defines it. This V. has become especially widespread since about the 20s of the last century. V. Bulgarin considers “The Cossack Poet” and “Lomonosov” by Shakhovsky to be typical examples of this. “The Cossack poet,” writes F. Wigel in his Notes, “is especially notable for the fact that he was the first to appear on stage under his real name V. From him came this endless chain of these light works.”
Among the noble-guard youth of the early 19th century. It was considered a sign of “good taste” to compose a V. for a benefit performance of this or that actor or actress. And for the beneficiary this was beneficial, because it also implied some “propaganda” on the part of the author for the upcoming benefit collection. Later, even Nekrasov “sinned” with several vaudeville acts under the pseudonym N. Perepelsky (“You can’t hide an awl in a sack, you can’t keep a girl in a sack”, “Feoklist Onufrievich Bob, or a husband is out of his element”, “This is what it means to fall in love with an actress”, "Actor" and "Granny's Parrots").
Usually V. were translated from French. “Adaptation of French vaudevilles to Russian customs was limited for the most part to the replacement of French names with Russian ones. Gogol wrote in his notebook in 1835: “But what happened now when the real Russian, and even somewhat stern and distinctive national character, with his heavy figure, began to imitate the shuffling of the petimeter, and our corpulent, but sharp-witted and intelligent a merchant with a wide beard, who knows nothing on his foot except a heavy boot, would instead put on a narrow shoe and stockings a jour, and, even better, would leave the other one in the boot and become the first pair in the French quadrille. But our national vaudevilles are almost the same.” Belinsky’s verdict on Russian vaudevilles is just as harsh: “Firstly, they are for the most part adaptations of French vaudevilles, therefore, the couplets, witticisms, funny situations, the beginning and the denouement - everything is ready, you just know how to use it. So what happens? This lightness, naturalness, liveliness, which involuntarily captivated and delighted our imagination in French vaudeville, this wit, these sweet nonsense, this coquetry of talent, this play of the mind, these grimaces of fantasy, in a word, all this disappears in the Russian copy, and only heaviness remains , awkwardness, unnaturalness, tension, two or three puns, two or three equivocations, and nothing more.”
Secular theatergoers usually cooked V. according to a very simple recipe. Griboedovsky Repetilov (“Woe from Wit”) also spoke about him:
“... six of us, lo and behold, it’s a vaudeville act
blind,
The other six put music to music,
Others clap when they give it...”
There are indications that Pushkin, meeting the requests of some friends, paid tribute to the custom of the then high-society dandies, although the texts of Pushkin’s vaudeville couplets have not been established with certainty.
Usually vaudeville poems are such that, with all condescension, they can only be called rhyming.
The passion for vaudeville was truly enormous. In October 1840, only 25 performances were staged at the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater, of which almost each, in addition to the main play, had one or two more V., but ten performances were, in addition, composed exclusively of vaudevilles. Herzen, looking forward to the arrival of M. S. Shchepkin in London, recalls (in a letter to M. K. Reichel) not his big roles, but a vaudeville chorus:
“Chuk-chuk, Tetyana,
Chernobrov Kokhan."
Shchepkin himself played V. quite willingly. They occupied a very prominent place in his repertoire. Going on tour to St. Petersburg in 1834, he sent Sosnitsky his repertoire, which, along with “Woe from Wit,” contains a lot of V.
Since about the 40s. in V., an element of topicality and polemic begins to noticeably emerge, either in the text, or in the form of acting gags and couplets, and this is a great success among the public. Of course, topicality in Nicholas’s times could not go beyond the limits of purely literary or theatrical anger (and then carefully), everything else was “strictly prohibited.” In Lensky’s vaudeville, for example, “In people, an angel is not a wife, at home with her husband it is Satan.” The bastard sings:
“Here, for example, analysis
Polevoy's plays -
Both author and actor
They won’t understand a word here...”
Particular success fell on V. Lensky’s five-act “Lev Gurych Sinichkin or the Provincial Debutante,” adapted from the French play “The Father of the Debutante.” It has been preserved in the repertoire of theaters to this day; now, of course, it is already devoid of any topicality (of which there was a lot in it), but it has not yet lost the significance of the picture of theatrical morals of that time. In the 40s, another special genre of V. “with disguises” appeared. In them, the young actress Asenkova, praised by Nekrasov, was a resounding success. The most popular authors of V. were: Shakhovskoy, Khmelnitsky (his V. “Castles in the Air” remained until the end of the 19th century), Pisarev, Koni, Fedorov, Grigoriev, Solovyov, Karatygin (author of “Vitsmundir”), Lensky and others.
The penetration of operetta (see) to us from France at the end of the 60s weakened V.’s passion, especially since all kinds of political impromptu were widely practiced in operetta (of course, within the limits of very vigilant censorship), ad-libs and especially topical ones (in the same vaudeville type) couplets. Operetta was unimaginable at that time without such couplets. But nevertheless, V. remains in the repertoire of the Russian theater for quite a long time. Its noticeable decline begins only in the eighties of the last century. Bibliography:
Gorbunov I.F., L.T. Lensky, “Russian Antiquity”, No. 10, 1880; Tikhonravov N. S., prof., M. S. Shchepkin and N. V. Gogol, journal. "Artist", book. V, 1890; Izmailov A., Fyodor Koni and the old vaudeville., “Yearbook of the Emperor. theaters", No. 3, 1909; Warneke B.V., History of the Russian theater, part II, Kazan, 1910; Notes, letters and stories of M. S. Shchepkin, St. Petersburg, 1914; Ignatov I. N., Theater and spectators, part I, M., 1916; Beskin E., Nekrasov the playwright, journal. "Educator", No. 12, 1921; Grossman L., Pushkin in theater seats, Leningrad, 1926; Vigel F. F., Notes, vol. I, M., 1928, Beskin E. M., History of the Russian Theater, M., 1928; Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, History of the Russian Theater, M., 1929 (2 vols.).
Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
Vaudeville
(French vaudeville from vau de vire - the valley of the Vire River in France, where folk songs - vaudevilles - were widespread in the 15th century), an easy play with couplets. Initially - comic songs, from the 18th century. obligatory in comedies, then vaudeville becomes an independent genre. Found widespread use in French drama of the 18th and 19th centuries. ( best authors recognized by E. Scribe and E. Labiche). In Russia, vaudeville became popular at the turn of the 1820s and 30s; it is a morally descriptive and descriptive genre. Best works This genre belongs to A. I. Pisarev (1803-28), D. T. Lensky (1805-60), F. A. Koni (1809-79), and also wrote vaudeville N. A. Nekrasov.
Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .
Vaudeville
VAUDEVILLE. Vaudeville is a dramatic encounter in a comedic sense (see comedy). If in comedy the dramatic struggle should not be brutal, then this is even more applicable to vaudeville. Here, usually, a comedic violation of some very minor social norm is depicted, for example, the norm of hospitality, good neighborly relations, etc. Due to the insignificance of the violated norm, vaudeville is usually reduced to a sharp short collision - sometimes to one scene.
Vaudeville history. The etymology of this word (vaux-de-Vire, Vire Valley) gives an indication of the initial origin of this type of dramatic creativity (the city of Vire is located in Normandy); Subsequently, this word was interpreted through distortion as voix de ville - village voice. Vaudeville began to be understood as such works in which the phenomena of life are defined from the point of view of naive village views. The light nature of the content is a distinctive feature of vaudeville. The creator of vaudeville, who characterizes these works in terms of their content, was the 15th century French poet Le Goux, who was later confused with another poet Olivier Basselin. Le Goux published a collection of poems, Vaux de vire nouveaux. These light comic songs in the spirit of Le Goux and Basselin became the property of the broad urban masses in Paris, thanks to the fact that they were sung on the Pont Neuf bridge by wandering singers. In the 18th century, Lesage, Fuselier and Dorneval, in imitation of these vaudeville songs, began to compose plays of similar content. The text of vaudevilles has been accompanied by music since the beginning of the second half of the 18th century. The musical performance of vaudevilles was facilitated by the fact that the entire text was written in verse (“The Miller” by Ablesimov). But soon, during the actual performance of vaudeville, the artists began to make changes to the text in prosaic form - improvisations on the current issues of the day. This gave the authors the opportunity to alternate verse with prose. From this time on, vaudeville began to branch into two types: vaudeville itself and operetta. In vaudeville, spoken language predominates, and in operetta, singing predominates. However, operetta began to differ in its content from vaudeville. It parodies various phenomena of life. This is Khmelnitsky’s operetta (beginning of the 19th century): “Greek Nonsense or Iphigenia in Tauris” and the later ones: “Orpheus in Hell”, “Beautiful Helen”, “Daughter of the Market”, “Songbirds”, “Geisha”, etc. After this differentiation of vaudeville, what remains behind it is first a humorous depiction of the life of the urban class in general, and then the middle and petty bureaucrats.
The ease of content of vaudeville was also facilitated by the fact that it was compiled on occasion for a benefit performance of an artist or actress, and it was staged for the most part after a serious drama or tragedy. This determined the insignificance of its volume, although not only three-act vaudevilles are known, but even five-act ones (Lensky’s vaudeville of 5 acts - “Lev Gurych Sinichkin or the Provincial Debutante”). The insignificance of vaudeville required a special condensation of the comic element compared to comedy. Therefore, the hyperbolic nature of the comic led to the rapid development of action.
At first, vaudeville was written in verse, then poetry began to alternate with prose dialogues - with the indispensable repetition of the same couplets addressing the public; often the verses themselves were called vaudevilles. In later times, verses and music became optional.
Our most remarkable vaudeville artists were Khmelnitsky, Shakhovskoy, Pisarev, Polevoy, Karatygin II and others. In the era of reforms, vaudeville lost its importance, giving way to operetta. In most cases, vaudevilles were translated plays, often from French, but foreign names were often remade into the Russian style. Chekhov wrote his jokes in vaudeville form: “The Bear” and “The Proposal.”
V. Volkenshtein., Iv. Lyskov. Literary Encyclopedia: Dictionary literary terms: In 2 volumes / Edited by N. Brodsky, A. Lavretsky, E. Lunin, V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, M. Rozanov, V. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky. - M.; L.: Publishing house L. D. Frenkel, 1925
Synonyms:
See what “Vaudeville” is in other dictionaries:
vaudeville- I, m. vaudeville f. 1. A type of folk songs common in France. Sl. 18. outdated A humorous vaudeville song, humorous couplets. BAS 2. While walking through the streets, he sang some songs composed by Poems, like French Vaudevilles.... ... Historical Dictionary Gallicisms of the Russian language
- (French vaudeville). A type of theatrical play with cheerful, funny content and singing; received its name from the name of the mountains. Vau, or Val de vire, where Olivier Basselin, at the end of the 14th century, composed cheerful drinking songs. Dictionary foreign words,… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
Vaudeville- VAUDEVILLE. Vaudeville is a dramatic encounter in a comedic sense (see comedy). If in comedy the dramatic struggle should not be brutal, then this is even more applicable to vaudeville. Here, comedy is usually depicted... Dictionary of literary terms
See joke... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and similar expressions. under. ed. N. Abramova, M.: Russian Dictionaries, 1999. vaudeville spectacle, opera (etc.), joke, farce, vaudeville Dictionary of Russian synonyms ... Synonym dictionary
Modern encyclopedia
Male, French a dramatic spectacle with songs, singing, and opera and operetta are all set to music. Vaudeville, related to vaudeville Vaudeville husband. vaudeville writer. Yes, vaudeville is a thing, but everything else is gild. Griboyedov. Dictionary Dalia... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary
vaudeville- vaudeville. Pronounced [vaudeville] and acceptable [vaudeville]... Dictionary of difficulties of pronunciation and stress in modern Russian language
Vaudeville- (French vaudeville, from vau de vire, literally the valley of the Vire River in Normandy, where vaudeville folk songs were widespread in the 15th century), a type of light comedy performance built on entertaining intrigue, with songs in verses, ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Vaudeville is The name goes back to the name of the valley of the Vire River in Normandy (Val de Vire), where at the beginning of the 15th century lived the clothier Olivier de Baslin, a skilled compiler of satirical songs. Possibly also derived from the name of a city song- voix de ville (“city voices”). Vaudeville is a light comedy play with an anecdotal plot, in which dialogue and dramatic action, built on simple intrigue, are combined with couplet songs, music, and dances. Initially, vaudeville songs had nothing to do with dramatic art. Only in the first half of the 18th century French writers began to insert popular songs of this kind into their one-act plays for fair theaters (L. Fuselier, A. R. Lesage, J. F. Regnard, etc.). By the middle of the 18th century, the poetic form of vaudeville changed: the song turned into a verse, and examples of comedy appeared in French drama with the completion of acts, especially the last, with small verse songs. The final songs of P. O. Beaumarchais's comedy “The Marriage of Figaro” (1784) were also called vaudeville. This is how “vaudeville comedies” and “comedies decorated with vaudevilles” arose. As an independent type of dramaturgy, vaudeville developed during the period French Revolution. After publication Legislative Assembly Decree of 1791 on freedom of public performances in Paris P.A.O. Pins and P.I. Bars opened a professional Vaudeville Theater in 1792 to stage plays exclusively in this genre, after which other vaudeville theaters appeared - the Troubadour Theater, the Montagee Theater. Over time, vaudeville, having lost its satirical pathos and turned into an entertainment genre, became a type of European comedy. E. Scribe (1791-1861) canonized the genre in France and created about 150 such plays. Scribe's main themes were family virtues and enterprise.
Vaudeville in Russia
Vaudeville appeared in Russia in the first decades of the 19th century. under the influence of the French, divided into two types: the original Russian vaudeville, which contributed to the national French form Russian content, and translated, completely preserving the traditions and main themes of the European genre. The first examples of the original Russian vaudeville, created in 1812-30, belong to A.A. Shakhovsky (“Cossack the Poet,” post. 1814, edition 1815; “Lomonosov, or the Recruit the Poet,” post. 1814, edition 1816; "Peasants, or Meeting of the Uninvited", post. 1814, ed. 1815). V. was also written by N.I. Khmelnitsky (“Grandma’s Parrots”, 1819; “You can’t beat your betrothed with a horse, or Every cloud has a silver lining” 1821), A.I. Pisarev (“Teacher and student, or A hangover at someone else’s feast”, 1824; “The Troublemaker, or the Master’s Work is Afraid,” 1825). The development of Russian vaudeville since 1830 continued in two directions. On the one hand, many purely entertaining vaudevilles appeared with a typical plot and mediocrity of images; on the other hand, there has been an emergence of marked democratic tendencies. Among the authors of this time there were many amateur actors and directors. Some vaudevilles created by non-professional playwrights in 1830-40 took a strong place in comedic literature: “Lev Gurych Sinichkin” (post. 1839, published 1840), “The Groom in Great Demand” (1840) by D.T. Lensky; “Student, cornet, artist and swindler” (1840), “Petersburg apartments” (1840) F. A. Koni; “You can’t hide an awl in a bag; you can’t keep girls under lock and key” (1841), “Actor” (1841) by N. A. Nekrasov; “Bakery” (1841), “Dead Eccentric” (1842) by P.A. Karatygin; “The Daughter of a Russian Actor” (1844), “Sharing for a box at the Italian opera” (1843) by P.I. Grishryev. Characters These vaudevilles were landowners, merchants, officials, noble patrons of the arts, and corrupt politicians. At the same time, late classic vaudeville came closer to serious domestic comedy and a comedy of characters, which led to the growth of the prose text at the expense of the poetic text and to the liberation of the couplet from dramatic functions. Vaudeville was increasingly losing its genre features. In the second half of the 19th century, vaudeville almost completely disappeared from the repertoire of the Russian theater. Standing apart were the one-act plays of A.P. Chekhov (“On the dangers of tobacco”, 1886; “Bear”, 1888; “The Proposal”, 1888; “Anniversary”, 1892; “Wedding”, 1890, etc.), developing the traditions of Russian vaudeville . Elements of vaudeville plot construction (paradoxicality, swiftness of action, suddenness of the denouement) were found in the satirical miniatures of L. Andreev, V. Kataev and others.
Vaudeville is a genre from the world of drama, which has characteristic, recognizable signs. We can say with confidence that he is the “great-grandfather” of modern pop music. Firstly, this is a very musical play, full of dances and songs. Secondly, it's always a comedy.
Vaudeville is also a theatrical play created in this genre. Its plot is simple and easy. The conflict is built on a funny intrigue and is resolved with a happy ending.
Story
The origin of such an unusual word is curious. Historians claim that it was born in the fifteenth century in Normandy, near the Vir River. There lived poets who wrote folk songs, which were called val de Vire, translated as “Vir Valley”. Later the word changed to voix de ville (literally "provincial voice"). Finally, in French, the term took shape as vaudeville, which means “vaudeville.” This was the name of literary works in which events were presented through the prism of simple-minded, uncomplicated perception. Initially, these were just street joke songs performed by traveling artists. Only in the eighteenth century did playwrights appear who, focusing on the nature of these songs, began to compose plays with similar plots and in a similar style. Since the texts were poetic, music easily fell on them. However, the actors improvised a lot during the performance of plays; they did this most often in prose, and therefore playwrights also began to alternate poetic pieces of text with prose ones.
Vaudeville and operetta
Art critics say that from that moment on, vaudeville had younger sister- an operetta, which, however, very soon became extremely popular. Singing predominated in operetta, and talking in vaudeville. The specialization of form was followed by some difference in content. Vaudeville is not a satirical, but rather a humorous depiction of the life and morals of middle-class people. Comedy situations in it develop rapidly, violently and often grotesquely.
Features of the genre
One of characteristic features works of this genre are the constant appeals of the actor to the viewer during the action. Also, the specificity of vaudeville is the obligatory repetition of the same song verses. The peculiarities of vaudeville made it a welcome part of any benefit performance. An actor giving such a performance, after serious dramatic monologues, can please the audience by appearing in a completely different image. In addition, vaudeville is a great opportunity to demonstrate your vocal and dancing abilities.
Impact on cultural traditions
Vaudeville was very popular among residents in the era of its inception. different countries and continents, but in each culture he went his own way. In America, for example, music hall and other bright, amazing show programs grew out of it. In Russia, vaudeville gave rise to joke plays and comic opera. Some of A. P. Chekhov’s brilliant works (“The Proposal,” “Bear,” “Drama,” etc.) have a completely vaudeville content.
An example of Russian vaudeville
“The Miller - a sorcerer, a deceiver and a matchmaker” - a sparkling comic play by Alexander Ablesimov in the spirit of vaudeville was first performed on stage in 1779. Two hundred years later it is being staged with pleasure modern theaters. The plot is extremely simple: the mother of the peasant woman Anyuta, born a noblewoman, but married to a peasant, does her best to prevent the wedding of her daughter, who has chosen a peasant boy as her husband. The girl’s father doesn’t want to take him as a son-in-law either. The cunning and enterprising miller Thaddeus is called upon to resolve the conflict. Since the village belief says that all millers are sorcerers, Thaddeus does not miss the opportunity to take advantage of this, believing that divination is nothing more than deception. He becomes a matchmaker and, finding his own “key” for everyone, successfully convinces Anyuta’s parents that they cannot find a better son-in-law. This funny sitcom has everything that the word "vaudeville" means.
