The Children of Rosenthal

The Children of Rosenthal
Opera by Leonid Desyatnikov
Composer Leonid Desyatnikov
Native title	Дети Розенталя
Librettist	Vladimir Sorokin
Language	Russian
Premiere	23 March 2005 Bolshoi Theater, Moscow

The Children of Rosenthal (Russian: Дети Розенталя, D'eti Rozental'a) is a 2005 postmodern opera in two acts by Leonid Desyatnikov to a Russian libretto by Vladimir Sorokin.

Set in USSR during the post-World War II era, the opera tells the story of clones of great composers: Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Verdi, and Mozart. They were cloned by Alex Rosenthal, a scientist who escaped from Nazi Germany to the USSR. The premiere took place at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow on 23 March 2005.

The Children of Rosenthal, which premiered in 2005, was the Bolshoi Theater's first world premiere of an opera since 1979. Eduard Boyakov and Peter Pospelov initiated the project and lobbied the Bolshoi Theater's administration. In 2002 a contract was signed, with Leonid Desyatnikov scheduled to compose the opera, and Vladimir Sorokin to write the libretto. At first, they planned to create libretto based on Sorokin's play Shchi, but since the play uses obscene vocabulary, they decided to create an original libretto instead. When Desyatnikov met with Sorokin, the latter proposed, "Let's write an opera about clones of classic composers".

Desyatnikov and Sorokin selected two Russians and three non-Russians as composers most representative of the opera genre: Wagner, Verdi, Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky. During preparation Sorokin read Russian translations of librettos of Der Ring des Nibelungen and some of Verdi's operas, and original librettos of Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov. Desyatnikov composed music based on works of 19th-century composers; in an interview he admitted that he also considered modern pop music as potential source material.