By Daniel Flynn
KYIV, June 7 (Reuters) - An opera by a Ukrainian composer that premiered in Kyiv this week tells the story of two mothers and a grandmother who risked their lives to travel 3,000 miles (4,800 km) to occupied Crimea to rescue children abducted by Russian forces.
"Mothers of Kherson", co-commissioned by New York's Metropolitan Opera, is based on the true stories of women who left the city in southern Ukraine after it was liberated in November 2022 to bring their children home.
They skirted
around the 750-mile front line via Poland, Belarus and Russia to reach the camp in Crimea where their children were being held.
Ukraine says it has confirmed the abduction by Russia of around 20,000 children during the four-year-old war. In March, a U.N. commission concluded the deportation and enforced disappearance of Ukrainian children by Russia was a crime against humanity.
The Kremlin denies this and says it evacuated Ukrainian children for their own safety.
So far, only 1,343 children have been returned home, according to Save Ukraine, a charity that helps to organize the rescues.
Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, said he hoped that bearing witness in art to the war crimes committed by Russia would help to raise awareness of them and leave a lasting record.
"It's just an incredibly emotional story that these mothers would basically sacrifice everything, including their lives if necessary, to get their children back," said Gelb, 73. Setting their story to music in opera heightened its intensity, he said.
"It has the capability of doing something that watching the news can't possibly do, or reading a newspaper, which is to elevate our souls," he said.
Yulia Radzevilova, who attended the premiere at Kyiv's 19th-century national opera house, was one of the mothers who inspired the work by Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets. She was one of the lucky ones and returned home just over three years ago with her son Maxim, now 16.
"The journey was very difficult and long," said the 39-year-old. Seeing her story on stage reduced her to tears, she said: "I was transported back to those times and emotions. It sounds so beautiful."
A teacher had organized what was presented as a two-week trip to Crimea in October 2022 for children to "rest" from the war, but Maxim was kept there for four months. When Yulia asked for him to be sent home, she was told to come to get him herself.
Maxim, who was 12 at the time, said the camp - where children were forbidden to speak Ukrainian, subjected to corporal punishment, and had to exercise every morning to the Russian national anthem - felt like a "prison".
He recalled calling his mother in tears on Telegram: "I wanted to go home. When I saw my mother, I was so happy."
A 'MOMENT OF HEALING'
Thursday's performance, held on Ukraine's remembrance day for children killed in the conflict, showed excerpts from the work, which is still being completed. It will receive a full staging at the Polish National Opera in October, before a premiere at the Met in April 2028.
Mykola Kuleba, founder of Save Ukraine, said he was surprised when Gelb had written to him after the rescues in 2023. They met in Washington to discuss the project.
"An opera about kidnapped children – I'd never heard of such a thing," said Kuleba. Listening to the "magical music" at the premiere was a "moment of healing" at a time when Kyiv was suffering regular air raids, he said.
Save Ukraine is still finding new cases of abducted children, whose parents were often killed, arrested or disappeared. Rescued children described being forbidden contact with Ukrainian culture and were taught that the West was their enemy, Kuleba said.
"We will not stop. We'll continue our rescue missions," he said.
Keri-Lynn Wilson, who conducted the premiere, founded the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra following the Russian invasion in an effort to showcase Ukraine's artistic talent internationally. A Canadian with Ukrainian roots, she said the opera would raise awareness of Ukraine's suffering and resilience.
"Ukrainian culture and music are vital and alive and you can't silence it," said Wilson, who is married to Gelb.
(Reporting by Daniel Flynn; Additional reporting by Anna Voitenko, Alina Smutko and Yurii Kovalenko; Editing by William Maclean)
