PROKOFIEV’S VOCAL FAIRY TALE “THE UGLY DUCKLING”: AT THE INTERFACE BETWEEN ROMANCE AND OPERA

The article is devoted to one of Sergei Prokofiev’s most controversial works, the vocal fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen (1915). The composer’s early experiments with vocals and instruments formed the foundation of his opera style and had a direct influence on his later works, in particular “The Gambler” (1916) and “War and Peace” (1941–1946). The peculiarities of the genre, form, and musical language of the opus have given researchers a number of questions, the answers to which continue to be sought. The article focuses on the problem of working with a primary source and its musical embodiment, which is characterized by a certain mixture of genre and stylistic. The analysis is placed in a biographical context, taking into account creative parallels and reliance on the traditions of predecessor composers. Based on the study of Prokofiev’s epistolary heritage, reviews of contemporaries and fundamental works of Russian researchers, the article reveals the features of the genre system, compositional structure, and musical vocabulary of the vocal fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”. The specific method of intonation used in the work, which comes from the vocal tradition of Modest Mussorgsky, is also discussed, and the existence of a peculiar dialogue with the works of Maurice Ravel is denoted.