GENRE SYNTHESIS IN W.A. MOZART’S OPERA “BASTIEN UND BASTIENNE”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2026.3.37Keywords:
Mozart’s operatic output, Singspiel, pastoral, opéra-comique, empfindsamer Stil, generic synthesis, musical theatre of the eighteenth centuryAbstract
The article examines W.A. Mozart’s opera-Singspiel “Bastien und Bastienne” (1768) in the context of generic traditions and the cultural environment of eighteenth-century Europe. The genealogy of the work is investigated, tracing its origins to the French opéra-comique of the Favarts and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Le Devin du village, and its role is revealed as a response to the prevailing Enlightenment oppositions of nature and culture, sincerity and convention. The opera’s generic synthesis is analyzed, combining features of pastoral, comic Singspiel, and elements of series dramaturgy. Particular attention is given to the symbolic and archetypal dimension of the work: the mystery-like tripartite structure, the function of the character Colas as mediator, and the interpretation of the plot as a psychological ritual of initiation. Musical analysis reveals the opera’s connections with Rococo aesthetics and the tradition of the empfindsamer Stil, as well as the specific technical means through which its multilayered dramaturgy is realized. It is argued that the work represents a micro-model of that synthesis of the comic and the serious, the psychological and the ethical, which would subsequently define the nature of Mozart’s mature operatic masterpieces.
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