У истоков создания оперы «Алмаст»
At the Origins of the “Almast” Opera Creation

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the meetings, friendly relations and creative cooperation of two spiritually close great Armenian national figures Hovhannes Tumanyan and Alexander Spendiaryan. Their talents were characterized by the common principles of processing folklore material, the ability to reveal the essence and spirit of folk art. Their meetings in Tiflis in 1916 were a success for the national culture. The idea of creating the “Almast” opera was born during Spendiaryan’s visit to Tiflis in March and his meetings and conversations with Tumanyan. The birth of the opera “Almast” was also due to the circumstances of the cultural and national-social life of the Armenian people. The 1910s were marked by increased attention to the work of Tumanyan by Armenian and Russian artists — Komitas, M. Saryan, V. Ivanov, A. Grechaninov and others. There is a lot of evidence of how Spendiaryan was inspired by Tumanyan’s poem “The Capture of Tmkaberd”, by the role of intuition and foreboding in art. It is noteworthy that both visits of Spendiaryan to Tiflis took place on tragic days for the Armenian people and Tumanyan himself, during the ongoing world war and genocide. That is why Tumanyan, both in his oral and written speeches, presented Spendiaryan as a “glorified composer”, as a “great talent”, as a symbol of the “viability” of a resurgent nation. He perceived both visits of the composer in the context of the ontology of the nation, explaining this by a sincere desire to return to national roots, to “his own hearth”, to his historical homeland. This approach was fixed at the literary and musical evenings of the Caucasian Society of Armenian Writers with the participation of the composer, in a warm literary and musical atmosphere, where the two great Armenians were inseparable. They decided to jointly create an opera libretto, for which Spendiaryan invited Tumanyan to his Crimean dacha. However, due to wartime, this creative collaboration remained unfinished. The image of Hovh. Tumanyan forever remained in the soul and memory of Spendiaryan in all its charm. Along with A. Glazunov, A. Chekhov, M. Gorky, F. Chaliapin, Hovh. Tumanyan became for the composer one of the most remarkable and outstanding people he met in his life, became an integral part of his biography, a phenomenon that stimulated his creative activity.

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