Two editions of "Aesop" in Bolshoi Drama Theatre: a speech style change

Bliudov Daniil Vladimirovich ORCID: 0009-0009-0229-0623 Senior Lecturer at Scenic Speech Department, Russian State Institute of Performing Arts 191028, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Mokhovaya St., 34 bludov213@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In the framework of this article, we will turn to the changes that took place in the era of the "thaw" in stage speech, and conduct a comparative analysis of two editions of G. A. Tovstonogov's play "The Fox and the Grapes" ("Aesop") based on the play by Guilherme Figueiredo. Two versions of one performance provide a unique opportunity to study the transformations that have occurred in the speech style of the Bolshoi Drama Theater artists in one decade: externally, the director's decision of the performance remained the same, but the performers, the speech aesthetics, and the era have changed. The premiere of the first edition of the play took place on March 23, 1957, this is one of the first performances of Tovstonogov at the BDT. Gorky. The recording of the performance itself has not been preserved, but we have at our disposal a film performance ^[1] staged by G. A. Tovstonogov and Yu. Musician in 1960. In the first edition in the role of Aesop – V. Politsemako, in the role of Xanthus – N. Korn, in the role of Glue – N. Olkhin. The second edition was published on September 18, 1967, ten years later. The role of Aesop was played by S. Yursky, Xanfa – O. Basilashvili, Klei – N. Tenyakova. So, the first version of the play appeared at the very beginning of the "thaw" period, not only before the appearance on the stage of the BDT of the "most "thaw" performances of the theater" ^{[2, p. 90]}, – "Five Evenings" (1959) and "Elder Sister" (1961), – but even before the premiere "The Idiot" (the play was released in December 1957). The second edition of "The Fox and the Grapes" was carried out with a new cast of performers almost at the end of the "thaw".

A valuable property of the material we have chosen is its timeless nature: it is not a play from the life of contemporaries (in this case, changes in the speech style would be determined primarily by a change in the language of the characters), and not classical material (in this case, one could say that the absence of striking changes in the speech style is due to the inertia of the play). The play by G. Figueiredo is a stylization that sounds modern, but at the same time tells about the events of ancient times. Plays of a similar design (say, Brecht's parabola plays) give almost complete freedom for the director's decision and the search for an actor's existence. This kind of material, as we see it, allows us to clearly identify changes in theatrical aesthetics and, in particular, in the speech style.

From the second edition, only a small video fragment has been preserved ^[3] – a scene from the beginning of the second act, in which the inconsolable Xanthus laments over Klea's departure, and Aesop offers to return Xanthus' wife - in exchange for freedom. We will analyze exactly this scene from the beginning of the second act in both versions of the play. In both editions, the text differs somewhat from the original text of the play. Nevertheless, the changes made are not of a fundamental nature and allow us to compare the speech style of the two performances in several basic parameters.

The first significant difference between the two editions is the speed, the pace of speech. It immediately seems obvious to the ear that the scene performed by S. Yursky and O. Basilashvili sounds at a faster pace. More accurate measurements of articulatory tempo (defined as "the number of words per minute for the total time of articulation of words, i.e. without taking into account the duration of inter-phrase pauses" ^{[4, p. 1120]}), generally confirm this subjective feeling and allow you to get a more detailed picture. The average pace of Aesop's speech performed by V. Politsemako is 160 words per minute, most of the replicas sound at a speed in the range of 130-185 sl/min (at the same time there are both slowdowns up to 67 sl/min, and accelerations up to 200 and even up to 221 sl/min). Xanth performed by N. Korn speaks slower on average (the average tempo is 129 sl/min), almost all of his replicas sound at a speed of 90-150 sl/min. The average speech rate in the scene is 142 sl/min.

In the second edition, not only does the average pace of speech in the scene significantly increase (190 sl/min), but the decision of the scene, manifested in the speed ratio of the speech of the two characters, also fundamentally changes. Let's consider the second edition of the play in more detail. Oddly enough, S. Jursky speaks at almost the same average speed as V. Politsemako (165 sl/min and 160 sl/min, respectively). But the parameter of the average value in this case is not quite indicative and requires additional clarification. If V. Politsemako's most of the replicas sounded at a medium-moderate tempo, uniformly grouped around an average value of 160 sl/min, then S. Jurassic's all replicas break up into very moderate tempo (96-130 sl/min) and very fast (200-240 sl/min), forming as it were two poles, two high-speed mode. As for O. Basilashvili's speech, it sounds almost twice as fast as in the first edition of the play: the average tempo is 208 (!) sl/min against 129 sl/min performed by N. Korn. At the same time, O. Basilashvili's speech accelerates up to a truly incredible value of 343 sl/min. Thus, in the second edition, if not the alignment of forces has changed significantly (the director and the viewer, of course, empathize and are still internally connected to Aesop, and not to Xanth), then at least the tempo-rhythmic solution of the scene. In the 1960 version, the impressively "hungover" measured pace of Xanthus' speech contrasted with Aesop's passionate conviction. In the second edition of the play, at times calm in tempo, at times fluent, Aesop's speech acquires significance in a collision with the frivolous and rapid patter of Xanthus.

From the point of view of diction, the speech of V. Politsemako and N. Korn is characterized by pronounced differentiation, extreme convexity and intelligibility. Virtually no endings disappear throughout the scene: all [j] are convex at the ends of words ("with a cat", "history", "it is necessary for many", etc.); verb endings [t] and [t'] sound brightly ("what do I care", "depressing t", "don't tell t", etc.); consonants in stressed syllables significantly removed from the stressed vowel ("philosopho v") are not lost. At the same time, according to the director's decision, N. Korn in this scene plays Xanthus in a state of hangover after yesterday's libations with Agnostos: hence the specific deliberate "blurring" of diction. Consonants within this special distortion remain sonorous and voluminous, but sometimes several volumes merge into one ("right now" instead of "now", "must" instead of "must", "want" and "want" instead of "want", "need" instead of "need", "uviri" instead of "I'm sure", "scrotum" instead of "maybe she", etc.) Sometimes consonants are deformed: so, in the phrase "what should I do", the initial [w] lengthens and is realized as a sliding transition from [w] to [sh], that is, the consonant seems to fall apart. A similar disintegration of the consonant is also manifested in the forms "neither[x]that" instead of "neither[k]that", "that[?]yes" instead of "that[g]yes". Occasionally there is a loss of a consonant (the so–called elision) - for example, N. Korn pronounces [but] ("will be").

In the second edition of the play, diction differentiation is significantly reduced, especially in Xanf – O. Basilashvili. The endings often disappear: there is no final [p] in the word "Aesop" (in at least four cases), the final [k] in the word "pouch" is not heard, the words "do" and "do" sound like [de] and [zde] and so on. Due to the increased pace of speech, a contraction occurs much more often, significantly deforming the rhythm: instead of "want" sounds [hotsh], instead of "do" - then [dEut'], then [delt'], instead of "nothing" – [nothing], instead of "should" – [dozhn], instead of "you can" – [smosh], instead of "you want to" – [hoshshtoby], instead of "you will need" – [panadbts], instead of "maybe" – [power], instead of "enough of yours" – [khwaadidvai], instead of "telling" – [raskavt'], instead of "you think, now is the time" – [think dyas vremya], etc. At the junction of two consonants, O. Basilashvili often throws out one: in "depresses" sounds [n'] instead of [gn'], in "when" and "then" – [d] instead of [gd]. Insufficient volume of whistling leads to a distorted sound of individual words: in the word "fables", instead of [c'], a sound close to [d'] sounds, the word "threw" sounds like [brody], "would say" – like [skadal], "his" – like [tvivo] and Due to the increased speed and some technical negligence, O. Basilashvili's labial-dental [b] and [f] are sometimes deformed, being realized either as labial-labial ([pilosp] instead of [philosopher]), then as middle-lingual ([astail] instead of [astavil]). Also, O. Basilashvili's speech occasionally shows deformation of the soft [d’] (ube[zhz]en), softening of the hissing [sh] (kone[sh’]no). S. Yursky's speech is much more normative in diction, but it also undergoes some distortions, including due to the specific speech manner found by the artist for the role. In Aesop, performed by S. Jursky, [san] sounds instead of "Xanth", instead of "if" – [esi], instead of "I am her" – [aio], in the phrase "give me" – [m'n'] instead of [jmn'], [h] also falls apart and the finite disappears [k] in the word "pouch". Thus, in the aspect of diction differentiation, the difference between the first and second editions of the play is enormous, primarily due to O. Basilashvili's dictionally careless, blurred, deformed speech in the role of Xanth. In comparison with the more normative, but also not excessively voluminous diction of S. Jursky, O. Basilashvili's speech may seem dictionally acceptable. However, being put on a par with the extremely convex and legible speech of V. Politsemako and N. Korn, the pronunciation of both S. Jursky and (especially) O. Basilashvili immediately reveals a different quality, striving for a vital, everyday, relaxed speech manner, in O. Basilashvili reaching the point of negligence.

Let's consider the actor's speech in both editions of the play from the point of view of orthoepy. In V. Politsemako's speech, there is a somewhat excessive reduction of stressed vowels: [zhsh] instead of the normative [zhsh] ("you will order"), [et] instead of [et] ("this"), [also] instead of [also] ("too"), [shn] instead of [shn] ("woman"), [chk] instead of [chk] ("pouch"). Sometimes, as a result of excessive reduction, the final vowel also disappears (for example, "depressing" sounds like [depressing]). N. Korn's speech is more normative in this respect, but even he "laughs" sounds with [ts] instead of [ts] at the end. Some deviations in the sound of the first pre-stressed vowels in N. Korn ([twyih] instead of [twaih], [rykazyvt’] instead of [raskazyvt’], [kyneshn] instead of [kaneshn], [svajivo] instead of [svajivo]) are associated with the above-mentioned speech characteristic of a not completely sober person. Also heard in the speech of N. Korn and V. Politsemako are the hard endings of the reflexive forms of verbs that were relevant back in the mid-1950s ("made friends [with]", "returned [with]"), the form "yes" instead of "if".  

Curious from the point of view of orthoepy is the different pronunciation of the word "money" that repeatedly sounds in the scene: N. Korn always pronounces [k] at the end of the word, and V. Politsemako – the obsolete [x] (G. Vinokur raises such pronunciation of the words "money", "could", "boot", etc. to the dialect of South Great Russian variant ^{[5, p. 58]}). It is difficult to conclude unambiguously whether the not quite normative pronunciation of the word "money" is usual for V. Politsemako, or whether it is a speech characteristic specially found by the artist for the role of Aesop's slave. Selective auditory analysis of V. Politsemako's speech in diverse roles in several films and performance films did not reveal a strict pattern in this regard. On the one hand, none of the roles have a non-normative [x] at the end of the word. On the contrary, in the film-performance "Obachaev and others" (1959), the policeman pronounces "monster" with a finite [k]; in the film "The End of the World" (1962) and the film-performance "Rift" (1952), "around" sounds with a finite [k]. On the other hand, in several cases V. Politsemako shows dialect variations, for example, the fricative [?], characteristic of South Great Russian dialects. So, in the film-performance "Achievers and others" [?] sounds instead of [g] in the word "road" (timing 00:54:38). In the film-performance "Rift", the artist pronounces "I can't" with a fricative [?] (timing 00:22:34). However, replacing the final [k] with [x] and replacing [g] with [?] in the position between vowels are not equivalent dialect deviations. In the film-performance "The Rift" in the speech of V. Politsemako, "[x]that" sounds several times instead of "who" ("Robya, polundra, save yourself, [x] that can"; "And [x] that is so nimble?..."), but at the same time in the finale of the first the series clearly sounds "[k]that is young – that is brave!" (01:18:23), that is, obviously, dialect pronunciation through [x] is precisely part of the speech characterization that helps to create the image of the chairman of the ship's committee of Godun. Thus, we cannot conclude with certainty whether the dialectal /obsolete "dene[x]" in the film version of the play "The Fox and the Grapes" is a paint deliberately found by the artist or part of the individual speech habit of V. Politsemako. But as a result, the difference in the pronunciation of the word "money" (conscious or accidental) creates another layer in the confrontation between Aesop and Xanthus – the orthoepic layer.

Auditory analysis of several films-performances of BDT im. Gorky with the participation of V. P. Politsemako allows us to draw another conclusion. The role of Aesop does not stand out at all in terms of acting technique in general and in terms of speech style in particular from a long series of previous and subsequent theatrical and cinematographic works by V. Politsemako. It is impossible, therefore, to say that G. A. Tovstonogov revealed the artist from some new side in the play "The Fox and the Grapes", rather on the contrary: by a happy coincidence, a play fell into the hands of the director, which made it possible to use the creative individuality of the People's Artist of the RSFSR V. P. Politsemako extremely successfully. The melodious melodic proclamation, sophistication and monumentality, to which the artist clearly gravitated, turned out to be organically inscribed in the history of Aesop's slave stylized for antiquity, full of deep pathos and citizenship.

Let us return, however, to the orthoepic analysis and turn to the second edition of the play. S. Jursky retains the firm sound of the final [c] in the reflexive form of the verb ("made friends" – [made friends with]), and O. Basilashvili already softens this final sound somewhat ("returned" sounds with an intermediate consonant between [c] and [c']). Both performers pronounce the word "money" normative with the final [k]. O. Basilashvili has several deviations in the first pre-stressed vowels ("my" sounds like [m y ya], "she" as [e na]. But the most interesting from the point of view of orthoepy is the specific speech manner found by S. Yursky. This manner manifests itself in excessive reduction of the first pre-stressed vowel ("none" sounds like [nyk y kaj], "home" as [d e moj]), insufficient reduction of pre-stressed and stressed syllables ("woman" with [a] at the end instead of [b], "returns" with an unreduced first syllable – [in a z], etc.). The speech manner of S. Jursky is also manifested in the specific stretching of words, especially at the end of the phrase – the artist pronounces the final word as if by syllables, so that there is a clear equality, the chasing of speech. This happens with the ending of the phrase "And if I tell you what to do, will you give me freedom?" – sounds [sva-bo-doo] with a slightly elongated last syllable. We hear the same thing at the end of the phrase "Xanthus, do you want your wife to come back?" ([ver-nu-las]), in the phrase "Women generally can't stand philosophers" ([filo-sa-fi]), in the remark "Give me money" (de-nek), in the finale of the scene ("Now [sko-ra]… Your wife is [a ver-ne-tsza]"), that is, almost every phrase of Aesop in the scene ends in this way.

Jurassic used similar conscious orthoepic modifications both before "Fox and Grapes" and after. Excessive reduction of the first pre-stressed vowel in S. Jursky can also be heard in the role of D. Defoe in the 1967 play "... The Truth! Nothing but the truth!!" ^[6] ("tell me" how to live]), and in the role of Henry IV in the play of the same name in 1969 ^[7] ("how strange" as [to e to strange]), and in the role of Moliere in the play "Moliere" in 1973 ^[8] ("I've been playing with t[s] for twelve years, and Nick[s]I haven't seen you dressed yet..."). The role of Professor Polezhaev in the play "Restless Old Age" in 1970 is rich in conscious equality ^[9]: "This commander does not understand anything at all" ([k a mandir], [p a nimajt]); "Why was the pencil taken away?" ([k a randash]); "I thought it was a job" ([dum a l], [works a]), etc. In the role of Chasovnikov in the 1961 play "Ocean" ^[10] Jurassic also uses deliberate equality, sometimes resorting to stretching-slowdowns at the end of phrases (as in the role of Aesop): "who needs it? ..." sounds like [kamu na-d a?...]; "because" – [p a tamu]; "I will leave in any way" – [sposabam]; "It's iron" – [this] [same-lez-na]; "No, no, we need to make a turn" – [nada de-lat'pa-va-mouth]; "mammoths" – [ma-m a n-you], etc. At the same time, for example, Chatsky in "Woe from Wit" (1962) ^[11], and Tuzenbach in "Three Sisters" (1965) ^[12] sound in the performance of Jurassic, it is completely normative, without the slightest orthoepic deviations.

In addition to coinage, S. Jursky's speech style in the role of Aesop is characterized by timbral modification (nasal sounding) and intonational incompleteness of phrases. If Oleg Basilashvili's Xanth sounds everyday and absolutely modern (almost any of his phrases can easily be imagined not in the mouth of Xanth, but, say, in the mouth of Samokhvalov, played by the artist ten years later in the "Office Novel" by E. Ryazanov), then Sergei Yursky's Aesop "falls out" of time, his strange, bizarre, unfinished intonation – the intonation of the sage, the intonation of the rebbe. Conflict is carved out of this contrast. Compared to the positional struggle of the monumental Xanthus and Aesop in the first edition, the confrontation of the heroes performed by S. Yursky and O. Basilashvili unfolds also at the level of existence. Xanf-Basilashvili is a talkative philistine, modern and recognizable to the viewer of the mid–1960s, staying extremely "here and now". Aesop-Jurassic is constantly "not quite here" and "not quite now", from the height of his timeless wisdom, he always conducts a dialogue not so much with Xanth, but with the power, the world that Xanth personifies.

From the point of view of the intonation-melodic organization of speech, the artists in the first edition of the play exist in the same speech-musical coordinate system as the theater and cinema artists of the 1930s and 40s (for example, V. I. Kachalov in the prologue "Vouchers to Life" by N. Ekka ^[13] or M. Klimov and O. Pyzhova in "To the penniless" Protazanov ^[14]). Almost every stressed vowel of N. Korn and V. Politsemako falls into a pure musical tone. Within a phrase, a pitch range of up to one and a half octaves is sometimes realized. Let's consider as an example the first phrase of Aesop performed by V. Politsemako: "Once a mouse made friends with a cat ...". Instrumental analysis of pitch modulation (Speech Analyzer software environment) has shown that almost every vowel either falls perfectly into a pure musical tone, or tends to it.

So, for example, the first vowel in the word "Once" sounds at 146.2 Hz, which almost exactly coincides with the D of the small octave (147.8 Hz), the second vowel falls exactly in the la of the small octave (220 Hz), the third vowel (141.8 Hz) is close to the D-flat of the small octave (138.6 Hz). The highest vowel in the selected fragment is the stressed vowel in the word "mouse" (235 Hz, which almost exactly corresponds to the B-flat of a small octave – 233 Hz). At the same time, at the end of the phrase, the voice drops to 77.3 Hz, that is, it almost perfectly falls into the E-flat of a large octave (77.8 Hz). The sound pitch range of V. Politsemako within the limits of the phrase considered alone, thus, is a duodecime (19 semitones), that is, more than one and a half octaves (!). Intonation phrase at the same time, it splits into two parts. The first represents two jumps (first by a fifth, then by a major sexta) with a peak in B-flat of a minor octave and then an incomplete downward slide near the G-flat of a minor octave. The second part, after a jump from the B-flat of the large octave to the fa of the small octave (the peak falls on the stressed vowel), consistently descends melodically to the finale. Thus, there is a measured narrative ascending-descending melodic course.

Instrumental analysis of the entire scene performed in the software environments "Speech Analyzer" (pitch modulation) and "Transcribe!" (spectral analysis) reveals several distinctive features (see Appendix 1). Firstly, there is a large pitch range: N. Korn has 2 octaves in the scene under consideration (the baritone range from B-flat of the large octave to B-flat of the first octave), V. Politsemako has more than 2 octaves (deep bass range from D–flat of the large octave to E-flat of 1 octave). Secondly, the abrupt changes in the fundamental tone between adjacent vowels (hereafter the designations of the type "No. 1" indicate the sequence number of the replica (from 1 to 30) in the musical interpretation of the modulation of the fundamental tone – Appendix 1): in addition to minor modulations within three to four semitones, there are changes per quart ("not d o lzhn y sm e?" – No. 5, "mn e d e lat" – No. 9, "mn e sv o bodu" – No. 10, etc.); on triton ("f i l o s o f" – No. 5, "vs e d e ngi" – No. 24, etc.); on the fifth ("d a y mn e" – No. 16, "razor i m e nya" – No. 23, "z a m e nshuyu" – No. 27, etc.); on the minor sexta ("vern u l a s" – No.11, "times o r and t" – No. 23, etc.); on the big sex ("east o r and y", "t e p e r" – No. 3, "not udr u ch a et" – No. 8, "smaller" – No. 27); for a small septim ("w e n y", "u v e ren" – No. 25); for a large septim ("d a, d a y" – No. 16, "money and money" – No. 20, "udr a t with m o them" – No.29, "tep e r tv o ya" – No. 30); on the octave ("zh e n a" – No. 5, "t e p e r" – No. 30); on the big decima ("hoch e sh, thu o b" – No. 26).

In addition, several times there is a smooth modulation within one vowel (or smoothly passing from vowel to vowel), which we have designated in the notation "gliss.", that is, glissando. In the analyzed scene, the glissando technique is sometimes implemented on a very large interval interval: a small sexta up from the A-flat of the large octave to the mi of the small octave ("t o chen" – No. 4); a large non down from the sol of the small octave to the fa of the large octave ("no" – No. 28); a small decima up from the re of the minor octave to the fa of the first octave ("little" – No. 23).

The modulation of the basic tone in the speech of N. Korn and V. Politsemako is inextricably linked with the emotional and semantic score of the scene. Abrupt changes at long intervals occur most often in Xanth at moments of emotional outbursts (for example, No. 3, No. 5, No. 29, etc.), and in Aesop – due to the transition from register to register within the framework of a logical turn (№16, №20, №26, №30 and others). More one important feature of the intonation structure of the scene is the descending melody at the end of almost every replica (in 21 replicas out of 30), most often the phrase ends with a quart or a third down (replicas №1, №2, №3, №5, №9, №12, №13, №14, №16, №21, №24, №25, №27).

Thus, instrumental-auditory analysis shows that the scene performed by N. Korn and V. Politsemako is distinguished by a large pitch range, musical intonation, the presence of significant interval differences between adjacent vowels (up to a large decima) and smooth tone changes (glissando). The modulation of the basic tone is the most important expressive means for the artists of the first edition of "Fox and Grapes".

In completely different coordinates from the point of view of melodica, there is a scene from the second edition of the play. First of all, it must be said that instrumental and auditory analysis of the pitch modulation is hampered by much less vocalized sound production in S. Jursky and O. Basilashvili. Their speech, in comparison with the first edition of the play, tends more to a conversational, everyday, vital sound. The melodic speech of N. Korn and V. Politsemako (especially on stressed vowels) was almost always realized in the form of a rather narrow frequency band grouped around the main tone and multiple overtones. The less musically intonated speech of the artists of the 1967 edition is realized on vowels mainly as a hard-to-differentiate wide frequency band covering several semitones at once. Also, the analysis of the high-pitched score of the scene is complicated by the increased speed at which speech often turns into a continuous sliding over the frequency range (glissando).

Instrumental analysis of the pitch modulation in the entire scene, performed in the "Transcribe!" software environment, shows the following results (Appendix 2). The pitch range of the actor's speech in the fragment under consideration is 2 octaves (the salt of the big octave is the salt of the first octave in O. Basilashvili, the mi of the big octave is the mi of the first octave in S. Yursky). At the same time, with the exception of a few vowels, O. Basilashvili's speech is realized in the range from A large octave to E-flat of the first, and S. Jursky's speech – from G-flat of the large octave to B-flat of the small. Thus, the active range turns out to be somewhat less wide (one and a half octaves for O. Basilashvili, a little less for S. Jursky).

There are much fewer abrupt changes in the fundamental tone between adjacent vowels than in the first edition, and, more importantly, they are carried out at shorter intervals (here and further, Roman numerals of the form "XV" indicate the sequence number of the replica (from I to XXXII) in the notation of the modulation of the fundamental tone - Appendix 2). There are no sharp modulations by an octave or more, unlike the first edition. Once there is a drop to a large septima ("ruin and ruin" – XXIII); several times – to a small septima ("l y bl y" – VII, "v e s g o rod" – IX, "th o b m o I" – XIII, "mn e d e lat" – XV); once for a large sexta ("at the other end" – XXIX), and all of the above examples are found in the replicas of Xanf-Basilashvili. Several times, both artists have sharp changes in the basic tone to a small sexta ("many e d e lat" – XI, "many e" – XII, etc.); a fifth ("one y o o shka" – II, "m y shk a" – III, etc.); triton ("d e n e g" – XVI, XVIII); quarto ("mn e d e neg" – XVI, "mn e mn o go" – XXIV, etc.). Basically, the modulation of the pitch in the scene occurs smoothly and within a fairly narrow range in each particular replica.

There are almost no ascending-descending intonations, which were rich in the speech of V. Politsemako and N. Korn, and the descending melodic construction ceases to dominate, ending with a third / quart in the final of the replica. In the new version of the play, the incompleteness of the melody prevails at the end of the phrase: either a break in the replica (II), or an intonation rise (V, VI, XII, XV, XXIX, XXXI), or a slight descent by a small / large second, almost always accompanied by rhythmic stretching, ritardando (I, VII, VIII, X, XIII, XX, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX).

In general, if for the speech style of the first edition, the musicality of intonation and rich intervals existed as a matter of course ("sonority and flexibility of the voice were the professional norm" ^{[15, p. 455]}), then after a decade these same properties of speech become an expressive technique, a special speech characteristic. The musical organization of the high-pitched score of the scene performed by N. Korn and V. Politsemako was associated only with the semantic and emotional development of the action, and from the point of view of speech specificity was perceived neutrally. The perceptible modulations of the basic tone in O. Basilashvili's speech no longer seem neutral. This is a bright speech color, almost grotesque. So by 1967, the perception of the intonation-melodic component of the actor's speech had changed. What seemed natural and authentic 10-15 years ago now seems deliberate: "Voices sound strange. They don't say that anymore. They sing directly... they make an intonation" ^{[16, p. 275]}.

            Having analyzed the main changes in the speech style that occurred between the first and second editions of the play, we should note one more thing. Perhaps the key difference between the two editions of the play "The Fox and the Grapes" lies not so much in the field of speech technique as in the field of attitude to the sounding word, the place of the word in the theatrical fabric of the play. In the first version of the play, we observe the dominant role of the word, convex and significant. The parable-journalistic nature of the play is quite conducive to this. The scene is decided as a verbal (if not to say oratorical) duel. We see a completely different approach in the second edition. The word sounds much more matter-of-fact, a lot is pronounced "in advance", but there is a powerful second plan, a tangible "pulsating" subtext. The conflict moves to another level, verbal confrontation is replaced by a more subtle struggle, especially on the part of Jurassic-Aesop. There is that "new correlation of word and action" ^{[17, p. 74]}, about which G. Tovstonogov wrote in 1962 as a key feature of modern theater. Those features of the updated speech aesthetics, which we wrote about in connection with the film by Marlene Khutsiev "I am twenty years old", are also realized in the second edition of "Aesop": this is an increased pace of speech, and diction "blurring", and voices removed from the vocal position, and incompleteness of intonation, and chamber sound, and the shift of the actor's (and, as a consequence, the audience's) attention from the area of the word to the area behind the word.

Despite the fact that the first edition of "Fox and Grapes" was published in 1957, after the death of Joseph Stalin, the xxth Congress of the CPSU, the birth of "Sovremennik" and the release of the first films of the new "thaw aesthetics" ("Spring on Zarechnaya Street" by M. Khutsiev, "Soldiers" by A. Ivanov et al.), yet Tovstonogov's performance aesthetically belongs to the previous, outgoing era. First of all, this concerns the actor's existence and, in particular, the speech style. The voices of V. Politsemako and N. Korn, with their powerful volume, unhurried sonority, the position of the larynx, close to vocal, extreme intelligibility and musicality of intonation, stand on a par with V. I. Kachalov, whose speech style we discussed in detail in the first chapter. We do not quite agree with P. Bogdanova, who writes about "Aesop" in 1957 as the first significant production by Tovstonogov, "in which the breath of the "thaw" was felt" ^{[2, p. 83]}. From an ideological point of view – maybe, but from the point of view of acting existence – by no means. Despite the lively pulsating thought, the absence of empty recitation, acute positional confrontation, the artists in the first edition of "Fox and Grapes" still exist in the outgoing speech aesthetics, which will soon begin to be displaced from the stage of the BDT. Already at the end of 1957, the premiere of the play "Idiot", a turning point for the creative fate of the BDT, will take place, the speech tuning fork of which will be I. Smoktunovsky, invited to the theater after he played the role of Lieutenant Farber in the 1956 film "Soldiers" (one of the first films of updated sound and updated aesthetics). The quiet, chamber, unusually sounding speech of the hero Smoktunovsky, "an unusual manner of intonation that turns affirmative sentences into interrogative ones" ^{[15, p. 449]}, came with him from the cinema to the BDT stage. The role of Prince Myshkin became "a presentiment of a new human type entering life and a new acting manner" ^{[18, p. 98]}. And two years after "The Fox and the Grapes" there will be "Five Evenings", which brought "a new truth of the theater" ^{[16, p. 41]} and a new speech style.

By historical standards, the decade that has passed between the first and second editions of the play "The Fox and the Grapes" is negligible. Nevertheless, a comparative analysis of the two editions of the same performance makes it obvious that they belong not just to different times, but to different eras. Over the past ten years, the criteria of reliability have evolved, the speech style has radically changed in the direction of "destruction of habitual expressiveness, lack of effect" ^{[16, p. 276]}. The tectonic process of changing speech aesthetics and speech technique, which began in the mid-1950s simultaneously in the theater (Sovremennik) and cinema, had largely ended by 1967, when the second edition of Fox and Grapes appeared. In the theater and on the screen, a new standard for the sound of acting speech has been established, which has become much more rapid, less differentiated dictionally and melodically, flexible and variable in terms of breathing, individualized. Despite the fact that the process of updating the aesthetics of the sounding word, generated by large-scale historical and cultural changes in the life of the USSR, was born in parallel in the theater and in the cinema, yet it was the mass art of cinema that played a decisive role in the formation of a new standard. The updated cinematography modified both the audience's perception of acting speech, and the attitude of theater directors and artists to the word, left an imprint "on the very feeling of the theater" ^{[19, p. 115]}. The voices of the Thaw cinema determined the radical renewal of the aesthetics of stage speech in the 1950s and 1960s. Cinematography, according to G. A. Tovstonogov, "refines the means of scenic expressiveness and brings the actor [...] closer to the modern sense of theater" ^{[19, p. 115]}, forces him to respond to the new aesthetics "with a more concise and thus, ultimately, more expressive language that brings cinema to the theater" ^{[19, p. 115]}. p. 115]. Examples of "Sovremennik", performances by G. A. Tovstonogov, A.V. Efros demonstrate the sensitivity of the theater to the "hum of the epoch", the need to "get closer to reality, reflect it" ^{[2, p. 9]}, a rapid change in speech style: in 1956, "Eternally Alive" ("Sovremennik") was released, at the end of 1957-go – "Idiot" (BDT), in 1959 – "Five evenings" (BDT)... The process of transformation of the approach to the sounding word went on in different theaters in different ways, but in general, since the mid-1950s, under the influence of cinema, the process of updating speech aesthetics took place inexorably: the monumentality, technological perfection and sonority of stage speech of the 1930s and 1940s were replaced somewhere faster, somewhere slower by actor's speech more individualized, variable, mobile. Despite the fact that the stage speech training program did not change in the 1950s, "a new generation of professionals was able to convincingly imitate the "unprofessional" manner of speaking "simply", quietly, weakly, "like in a movie"" ^{[15, p. 484]}. The theatrical word began to move towards the everyday word, the word of life. This process continues today.

Appendix 1: Musical transcription of the modulation of the main tone (film performance "The Fox and the grapes", 1960)

 Note: The effect of alterations (flat) applies only to one note, the sign of cancellation of alterations (bekar) is not affixed

Appendix 2: Musical interpretation of the modulation of the main tone (performance "Fox and grapes", 1967)

 Approx. 1: The effect of alterations (flat) applies only to one note, the sign of cancellation of alterations (bekar) is not affixed.

Approx. 2: A wave-like sign marks difficult-to-differentiate vowels of a wide spectrum with an assumed basic tone. Vowels in which the intended basic tone could not be distinguished are not marked in the musical transcription.