The Theresienstadt Children’s Opera

screen shot from the video being discussed

This week (through July 12) Music of Remembrance (MOR) is presenting a streamed video of Hans Krása’s one-act children’s opera “Brundibár.” MOR is an organization with the mission of remembering the Holocaust through music with concert performances, educational programs, recordings, and commissions of new works. Krása originally composed “Brundibár” in 1938; but he took the score with him when he was interned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The opera had been written explicitly to be performed by children, and the authorities allowed Krása to teach the music to the children held at that camp. Through this medium he was able to present an allegorical tale of a town in which the children are bullied by Brundibár, who is the local organ grinder. They succeed with assistance from a dog, a cat, and a bird (all vocal roles). It would have been clear to everyone in the camp that Brundibár was basically a thinly-veiled evocation of Adolf Hitler, who was actively extending the German borders when “Brundibár” was composed.

The opera was performed 55 times at Theresienstadt. The bitter irony behind this number is that the production kept needing recasting. Theresienstadt was a “transit center,” where Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria were held temporarily until they were delivered to the so-called “death camps.” Those assignments involved children, as well as their parents; so, as a result, there was an ongoing need to change the cast, bringing “children coming in” to replace “children going out.”

MOR first performed “Brundibár” in 2006, using an English-language libretto written by Tony Kushner. Kushner had originally provided the text for a children’s picture book based on the opera. The illustrations were provided by Maurice Sendak, and it was recognized by the Book Review section of The New York Times as one of the best illustrated books of 2003. That same year the Chicago Opera Theater performed the opera with Kushner’s libretto and staging and set designs by Sendak.

MOR revived its 2006 performance in 2014 with the Seattle Children’s Theater. That production was captured on the video that is currently being streamed through its own Web page. This occasion was particularly distinguished since, during the final chorus, the cast was joined by Ela Stein Weissberger, who sang the original role of the cat in Theresienstadt, participating in all 55 performances at the age of eleven. (Weissberger died in 2018 at the age of 87.)

This all made for a historically significant occasion, which could not have better served MOR intentions. Sadly, that old saw about good intentions applies to the finished product. By all rights Kushner’s English should have been able to manage more than satisfactorily without the aid of subtitles. However, between diction and vocal quality, many of the more critical lines in the plot development were garbled by either the soloists or the chorus. Similarly, there were too many incidents in the staging that tended to confuse, rather than advance, the overall flow of the narrative.

I suspect that some readers may accuse me of being a sourpuss unwilling to cut the kids some slack. I would direct those readers to my account of the opening of Chris Pratorius’ one-act opera “Xochitl and the Flowers,” which took place in November of 2016. Produced by Opera Parallèle through their Hands on Opera project with third graders in the Alvarado Elementary School Spanish Immersion Program, this was the perfect example of children’s opera as it was meant to be. Between just the right amount of staging by Brendan Hartnett and serious vocal preparation, no one in the audience had any trouble figuring out what was happening and what words were being sung by both the chorus and the soloists.

If MOR is to pursue its “mission of remembering the Holocaust through music,” it owe it to audiences to bring more attentive discipline to the music being performed.