Children's opera in the works of E. Podgaits

The article is dedicated to the genre of children’s opera in the works of one of the leading contemporary composers - Efrem Podgaits (Honored Art Worker of Russia, winner of the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of culture, winner of the Prize of the City of Moscow, Member of the Board of the Union of Moscow Composers, Professor of the Musical-pedagogical Institute named after M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov). The author’s operatic work is represented by 15 works (including editions): the very number of musical and stage opuses testifies to how significant this genre is for the composer. Despite the fact that almost all compositions appeared without an official order, many of them were staged in different cities of Russia and are still included in the current repertoire. Only in Moscow, successful premieres of Podgayts’s operas were held at the Bolshoi Theater, the Children’s Musical Theater named after N.I. Sats, New Opera. All this indicates the relevance of the stated topic. The first appeal to the genre of opera (“Alice Through the Looking-Glass”) dates back to the period of study at the Moscow State Conservatory named after P. I. Tchaikovsky (staged at the St. Petersburg Musical Theater “Through the Looking Glass” in 1993); the premiere of the latter (“Barankin, be a man!”) took place in 2019 at the Novaya Opera Theater. The article attempts to trace the evolution of E. Podgayts; reveal the specifics of the selected plots and literary primary sources; to identify the main compositional and dramatic features of the compositions that provide the musical performance with its individual and unique look.