"Over the past decades, an increasing number of opera institutions in various countries have been developing educational programmes aimed at bringing children closer to the opera genre. Although the need for early engagement is recognized, many institutions focus their offerings on adolescents and young people. The educational work of opera houses aimed at children faces greater difficulties than that of orchestras. The need for material resources, work, and energy to put on performances designed specifically for children leads many institutions to offer mainly other types of programmes, such as workshops, guided tours, visits by a singer to schools, creative exploration camps, etc. In terms of repertoire, opera performances offered for children are divided into works composed for children and adaptations for children of famous works from the universal opera repertoire. The present study will examine different approaches and strategies that can contribute to the goal of helping children enter the world of opera. These will be accompanied by examples of programmes presented by several opera houses in Europe, USA, and Canada. We will then present two programmes of our very own design meant for children and offered in Cluj, conceived as a combination of an introduction to the opera genre with excerpts from masterpieces belonging to the opera genre, namely Rossini’s Cenerentola (2014, 2015) at the Romanian National Opera and The Magic Flute (2022) at the Hungarian Opera House. Keywords: children, opera houses, educational programmes "

"To design an educational concert, for it to be a valuable cultural-educational event and be attractive to children, various pedagogical, psychological, musical, and organizational aspects must be considered. These will be presented and illustrated through the analysis of the Noah’s Ark children’s concert, moderated, and conducted by the author as part of the Do Re Mi Start! educational program of the Gheorghe Dima National Music Academy. Keywords: educational concert for children, repertoire, visual elements, elements of music mediation. "

"The scope of this paper is limited to music mediation in the context of specifically designed concerts, hence the title “on stage”, with a focus on performances for children. In addition to research findings, the main part of the presentation will be devoted to insights gained from more than a decade of personal practical experience in moderating and conducting more than 120 educational performances for children. With the professionalization of music mediation, the many different approaches and strategies that can be used to best serve the goal of creating access to classical music have been studied and classified. The most important of these will be presented in the context of the concert. They will be illustrated with examples from the study of practices in different music institutions worldwide. Keywords: children’s concerts, music mediation "