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.
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