Formation of Children’s Opera in Russian Musical Culture in the Early XX Century

The research aims to shed light on the peculiarities of the formation of an opera genre for children’s audiences – children’s opera – in the history of the development of Russian musical culture in the early XX century. The paper examines and analyses vivid examples of children’s opera written by outstanding composers, “The Snow Bogatyr” by С. A. Cui, “The Mouse Tower”, “The Dream of the Fir” by A. T. Gretchaninov. Scientific novelty lies in identifying the originality of the musical language of the children’s opera works under consideration, in particular, it is determined that the opera action is “commented” through repeated themes, motifs, intonations, individual elements, sound-expressive techniques enhance the detail of musical speech, while the musical language of the work serves as the main narrator, the carrier of the main fairy-tale function in children’s opera. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that a pedagogical orientation contributing to children’s education is manifested in the specified detailed principle of the musical language of children’s operas.