Music and Time Annotation << Back The First Directorial Experiences of the "Actualization" of Classical Opera N.B. Seliverstova This article is devoted to the experimental directing of Emmanuel Iosifovich Kaplan (1895–1961), an opera singer and director, professor at the Leningrad Conservatory and founder of its opera and directing department – the fi rst in the world (1934). In the history of the development of Russian musical direction in the first third of the twentieth century, the role of E. Kaplan is very signifi cant, since the creative activity of this director, whose idol was Vsevolod Meyerhold, refl ected almost all the main reformist trends of the 1920s–30s – a period when the issues of revolutionary renewal of theatrical aesthetics were extremely acute, including in the course of adaptation classical heritage to the present day. The article analyzes the productions of three classical operas in the avant-garde interpretation of E. Kaplan for that time in collaboration with the most prominent theater artist V.V. Dmitriev, who designed performances by both Meyerhold and Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. The performances of Kaplan and Dmitriev offered the modern public topical interpretations of both the content and the form of the canonical text, which emphasized the socio-political aspect, which required not only the dramatic development of the stage score, close to the aesthetics of the drama theater, but also changes in the composer's musical plan. Keywords: author's directing, vulgar sociologism, Emmanuel Kaplan, mise en scene, actualization of classical opera. Pp. 11-15.