Sergei Prokofiev told the story behind this photo in his autobiography,

Thrilled and inspired by the music of two operas and a ballet he had seen in Moscow, in 1900, Prokofiev wrote his first opera “The Giant”. The young composer was only nine years old and was not even fully capable of using musical notation to write down the melodies in his head.

The boy came up with the plot of the opera himself, with him and his friends as the main characters. Once upon a time, a fearful Giant attacks a young girl Stenya (Ustinya). Her friends Serezha and Egor try to save her. The Giant flees in fear, and Stenya faints. In the second scene, Stenya drinks tea and writes letters to her deliverers. When she leaves for the post office, the Giant comes back to eat her. Having failed to find the girl, he eats her dinner instead. In the second act, Serezha informs the king about the dangerous enemy who has appeared in their kingdom. After that, there is a battle with the Giant, during which Egor is wounded. While Serezha leaves to bring reinforcements, the Giant disappears. In the third act, Stenya invites all of her friends to a festive party. When the party is in full swing, the king walks in unexpectedly. Having fought against the Giant for too long, he stabs himself in despair. This is the tragic ending that the young Prokofiev came up with.

As a young boy, Prokofiev wrote four operas that are not included in the collections of his theater works. These are “The Giant”, “Desert Islands” (1901), “A Feast in Time of Plague” (1903–1909), and “Undine” (1904–1907). In 1904, the thirteen-year-old Prokofiev brought the manuscripts of his four operas to the entrance examination at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. This made a great impression on the professors who attended the examination, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov, and Alexander Glazunov.