On October 27, the children's opera Terem-Teremok will be performed on the stage of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre. Seven orphanage students at the ages of three to six years will take part in it. The Igor Polsky’s musical tale performance is a part of the social project Family as a Gift carried on by the theatre along with the “Krasnoyarsk without Orphans” Initiatives Alliance for the fourth time.

This unusual kind of work with children who are deprived of parental care appeared in the Krasnoyarsk Opera in 2015 upon an initiative of the leading ballet soloist of the theatre Natalia Bobrova. The main goal of the project is to prove to society that the families should not be afraid to adopt children from orphanages. Every year the results demonstrate that this goal is achieved: “In 2015, all the eleven participants of the project found new parents; in 2016, eight out of 10 children were adopted,” says Ruslan Mokrousov, Executive Director of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Fund Krasnoyarsk without Orphans, - “In 2017, eleven out of 15 kids found new parents, and four of them - three months later after the performance was shown”.

The music coacher of the orphanage Irina Taranenko notes that the children get changed after the first rehearsals: “In the theatre, kids have much more communication, they loosen up, it’s easier to work with them. Children like it a lot. After the first visit, they started asking when they would perform for the audience”.

Choirmaster of the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre Anna Sorokina has been working with the children of the Family as a Gift project for years and knows how to use their distinctive features carefully: “It’s easier for such children to work together, they’re used to working as a large group, and it is easier to reveal their talents in a team. In the course of work, we mesh both their senses of hearing and their voices, children begin to intonate clearly, they develop a sense of rhythm and body coordination, and what is most important of all, they learn to trust adults. Of course, first working with so many unfamiliar adults is hard for them, but they quickly adapt. And after the performance, when everyone congratulates each other, it is an extraordinary celebration for them. It’s important they receive the love of adults in such a huge amount while working on the project”.

Since the Family as a Gift project launched, the performances have been shown in Achinsk, Kansk, Nazarovo, Zheleznogorsk, Divnogorsk and the village of Beriozovka.

But in the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre children take the big stage.