This month, Petite Opera Productions of Park Ridge, IL will present Brundibár, the children's fairytale opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister that was performed by children at the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Many of the children in that 1943 production did not survive the Holocaust. One who did, Ela Weissberger, now 84, will be attending and indeed participating in the Petite Opera staging, which runs November 7-22 at the Mary Wilson House Beyer Auditorium in Park Ridge, outside Chicago.
Composer Krása and librettist Hoffmeister wrote Brundibár in 1938. It was first performed in 1942 at the Jewish orphanage in Prague, then at the Terezin camp, where Krása reconstructed the score from memory and a surviving partial piano score. After dozens of performances, it was filmed for a Nazi propaganda film purporting to show that everyone was doing just fine in the camp.
After that, the composer, crew and cast of children were taken to Auschwitz where most were killed.
Weissberger, who lives in upstate New York, used to gather with other Brundibár survivors every year, but "We are every day less and less people," she said. "My very good friend--he was in 'Brundibar,' in the chorus--yesterday was his funeral."
But in Chicagoland and elsewhere, new generations of children are keeping the opera, and the spirit it represents, alive. Among the 21st century productions was one by the Yale Rep with scenic design by Maurice Sendak, who together with Tony Kushner also created a picture book version. The Yale Rep production, with Kushner's version of the libretto, played at New York's New Victory Theater in 2006. As Charles Isherwood wrote in his review, "The noxious voices of bullies--and worse--ring out through history. But as the unlikely survival of this opera suggests, the joy and beauty that music and art express can outlast evil even when they cannot defeat it."
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