Оперетите на Веселин Стоянов
Vesselin Stojanov's Operettas

Summary/Abstract: The little known and incomplete (as preserved material) operettas of Vesselin Stojanov: “The Sinner from Baghdad “, “Hai Linn”, “Abdal Firus” and “In the Caliph’s Seraglios”, aesthetically interpolated in time, place a distance, difficult to surmount, before the contemporary researcher, due to the unreliable oriental genre code as well as to the author’s mysterious self-negation. At the same time, their concrete historical belonging (the mid-thirties and the early forties of XX c) directs us straight to the innovational opera works of the composer from the same period: “Women’s Monarchy” (1935) and “Salambo” (1940). Moreover, we cannot neglect the historical evidence that, unlike the operas, Vesseli n Stojanov’s operettas were undeniable and thundering success - acclaimed both by the audience and the journalistic critics of the time. But not only the evaluation of time, but also the creative continuity exclude the possibility for full genre differentiation, irrespective of the individual composition qualities and the different scenic fate of the separate works. The determining factor in this case is that all of them were created for the Bulgarian musical stage by a highly erudite Vienna graduate in a sufficiently original and unified composition style, which preserves its characteristic features in each author ‘s score. Exactly in such a context we can interpret the composer ‘s inclination to symphonize the form and his definite affinity to expanded modality, to intonation stylization of the oriental imagery, as well as his generally recognized sense of humour, which are inevitably present in his operetta works as well. Even from a purely com­mercial point of view, the commission of the most reputable for the time private operetta theatres to create Bulgarian operettas with oriental stylistics, similar to the European genre model of the period between the two world wars, evidently was ad dressed to Vesseli n Stojanov not by chance. And in spite of the impossibility to “awake” them again for the stage today, mainly because of the incongruity of their librettos and their obsolete late romantic genre aesthetics, the oriental operettas of Vesseli n Stojanov have kept the merits of the style characteristics for the composer and the epoch, as evidence of accomplished creative experience in the specific popular music-scenic art.

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