The essay justifies differential approach to the analysis of the opera from the point of view of the plot. It demonstrates how philological method of comparative historical poetics reveals its constructive potential for the music drama in opening the way to building renewed historiclegendary plots on basis of actual philosophical ideas. «Kitezh» and «Parsifal» are compared in the aspect of influence which music and word provide on the construction of the sacral space of a mystery play – its structural centre which defines the Christian religious idea of the plot. The formally meaningful factors are the type of the plot (myth / legend / Christian legend) and the motif principle of the plot construction, which corresponds to the leitmotif technique of music.
plot; mystery play; myth; leitmotif; motif; sacral space; R. Wagner; N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov; V.I. Bel’sky; A.N. Veselovsky.