ECOLOGICAL, EDUCATIVE AND MUSICAL VALUES
Odštampaj
There are two types of children’s operas in the world literature: operas written on the topic of fairytales and stories about children, they are from the children’s world, but they are performed by adults, sung by professional singers and set on official world’s stages as serious operas.
Second type of operas and much rarer are those performed by children and their librettos are appropriate to children’s world, thus musical demands have completely different characteristics, they are appropriate to voices and abilities of children, their need to express themselves musically.
The music, composed by a long- time conductor of the choir “Kir Stefan Serb” from Smederevo, Milan T. Ilic, is simple, tuneful and consists of a series of children’s tunes in the frame of rounded songs. The music is written in bounds of children performing it, there are plenty of signs and sounds of our folklore, but applied and tastefully processed, so that they become close to sources, but close to children as well. For a while it is a country diphthong and then a quiet melody in national spirit, for a while the national instrument can be heard and then only a drum conjures a rural idyll.
In nowadays flood of trash and kitsch, the freshness of this music that supports humorous, ecological and educative values, told in verses and lyrics, represents an innovation in our musical heritage, the new approach to composing music for children and an attempt to make it interactive, which are the modern requirements of today. Children in the audience are called many times to give an active support to the performers on the stage and to participate in the performance through upgrading the same. Rhythmic components of the score, elaborated in the orchestra as well, are particularly close to the children’s world, but also to some modern methods in nowadays pop and rock music. The joy of children who take part in the project is the best guarantee of its value.
PhD Branka Radovic