Wednesday, June 10Wednesday, June 10The National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday hosted the premiere of *Mothers of Kherson*, a new opera confronting one of the war’s most harrowing legacies: the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian forces. The event drew the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, alongside families of abducted children, as the house filled with a charged silence before the first notes sounded. The work, conceived by American librettist George Brant, pivots from an earlier plan about the 2013–14 Maidan protests after Brant decided in 2023 to centre the score on the ongoing child abductions documented since Russia’s full-scale invasion .
The opera’s excerpts unfold in the gilded auditorium of the National Opera, where the audience—many visibly moved—witnessed a mother’s search for her son taken from occupied Kherson. The libretto weaves documentary testimony with choral lament, while the score, led by incoming music director Myung-Whun Chung, strips away ornamentation to expose raw emotion. “It was hard to imagine an opera with a subject more potentially traumatic—or cathartic—for the assembled audience,” noted one critic .
The work arrives as Ukraine’s government continues to document more than 20,000 children forcibly transferred to Russian territory, according to UN and Ukrainian prosecutors. Brant, whose play *Grounded* premiered in 2012, told reporters the shift in focus was immediate once the scale of abductions became clear. “We could not look away,” he said. The opera’s title references the mothers of Kherson, a city whose name has become shorthand for wartime atrocities, including the filtration camps and deportations documented by the UN Commission of Inquiry .
Reaction in the hall underscored the work’s potency. Zelenska, seated in the front row, wiped her eyes during a soprano’s aria that recites the names of children still missing. Outside the opera house, volunteers from the *Save Ukraine* NGO distributed flyers with updated contact details for families seeking information. “Tonight is not just a performance,” said one attendee, a teacher from Kherson whose nephew was abducted in 2022. “It is a roll call.”
The production runs through 28 June at the National Opera of Ukraine, Kyiv, with further performances scheduled in Lviv and Odesa. Organisers have pledged to donate a portion of proceeds to the *Children of War* fund, which supports families searching for abducted minors. In a statement, the opera’s director, Oksana Lyniv, said the work would tour European capitals later this year, aiming to “keep the world’s gaze on a crime that must not be forgotten.”
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