Comparison of Koroglu operas by Uzeyir Hacibeyli and Ahmed Adnan Saygun

After the staging of the first opera works with a national identity thanks to Uzeyir Hacibeyli and Ahmed Adnan Saygun, the art of opera has entered a development process in parallel with each other in both countries. In the first part of the study, the birth of Azerbaijan's national opera art and the developments in the field of opera until 1960 were discussed and information was given about Hacibeyli's life and opera works. Similarly, the birth of opera art in Turkey in the Republican Period and all opera works staged until 1960 are listed chronologically. Then Saygun's life and opera works are described. Thus, the role of both composers in the development of opera art in Azerbaijan and Turkey and the importance of their works are emphasised. In the second part of the study, information about Koroglu Epic is given and the relation of Koroglu operas with the western versions of the epic is explained. Koroglu opera composed by Hacibeyli in 1934 and Koroglu opera composed by Saygun in 1973 were analysed in depth with all their elements. The information of all the performances of the works staged until today was presented. In this study, the historical, political and socio-political factors affecting the composers at the stage of writing the operas were mentioned and the relationship between the works in terms of ideology and nationalism was analysed. In the third part of the thesis, Koroglu operas are compared in terms of characters, voice types of the characters, time, place, location, subject, plot and structure of the stories and musical expressions of the Koroglu characters and evaluated based on their similarities and differences. By analysing the dramatic structure of the works and the character transformations planned for the protagonist in the final scene, was examined in terms of how the composers handled the Koroglu epic. Keywords: Azerbaijan National Opera, Birth of Opera in Turkey, Uzeyir Hacibeyli, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, Koroglu Opera.