OPERA IN SCHOOLS

Brundibár is a beautiful children’s story, extolling the virtues of courage and cooperation and collective action against tyranny. Even the natural world of dogs, cats, and sparrows rises up in outrage and rebellion against injustice, poverty and the suffering of children. It’s a tale of the power of music to make miracles happen. It’s a story of good defeating evil. But its beauty is haunted, for Brundibár comes from one of the darkest points in human history, when evil, at least for a time, was triumphant over good, and millions upon millions died. One could say ultimately the music has triumphed: today Brundibár is performed all over the world, and the Jewish people have survived, endured, flourished. On the other hand, one must always be wary of drawing false reassurances from the horrific lessons of the Holocaust, perhaps especially now, when children all over the world are in such mortal danger – poor children, children in war zones, Jewish and Palestinian children, as well as homeless, uninsured, unprotected children in the United States. In dark times such as these, Brundibár, both the opera and its tragic history, shouldn’t offer us too much reassurance. We shouldn’t draw comfort from the fact that, even after the worst has happened, people and art survive, because after all, only some people survive, while many are lost, and some art is salvaged, but much creative brilliance, like Hans Krása’s, is extinguished before its time, and what the world loses can’t be recovered.

Instead of false comfort, Brundibár offers inspiration to action, and exhortation. Be brave, and you can make bullies behave! Rely on friends! Make common cause, build communities, organize and resist! And tyrants of all kinds, in every generation, can be and must be made to fall.

-Tony Kushner (who created a 2003 adaptation of the opera)