Brundibar, Standing on its Own?

Why let historical fact get in the way of a nice story?

Any discussion of Han Krása's Brundibár immediately becomes a discussion of its 55 performances in the Terezin concentration camp, the role it had in the lives of the children who lived there. It becomes an uplifting story, about how these children used this satiric anti-Hitler opera to defy their terrible surroundings, and how special the final victory song is. Brundibár becomes the Holocaust Opera. It's a nice little story, but it doesn't check out.

For starters, Kans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister collaborated on the opera before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. It wasn't written in response to the experience in the concentration camp. It's just a sad quirk of history that it happened to end up with so many performances in the camp. It's no more a Holocaust work of art the way Beethoven's 9th is Nazi music. After all, Hitler attended performances in Berlin of that great symphony. Perhaps more to the point, Brundibár relates to the Holocaust the same was Mendelssohn's Elijah does. Both were written before the war and performed by inmates at Terezin.

If we consider Brundibár on its own, it fits into the tradition of the Children's opera that had currency in Europe at that time. Kurt Weill was writing his didactic operas like Der Jasager, and Orff was working on fairy-tale operas like Der Mond. This is the context in which musical historians need to view Brundibár. (When Krása and Hoffmeister got together in 1938 to discuss the work, I somehow doubt they discussed writing a Holocaust opera and were influenced by other earlier Holocaust operas.)

So, then, how does Brundibár stand up if you remove the weight of history from its shoulders? It has some very nice moments, including the lullabye that proves to be its musical heart. Ultimately, however, it's hard to distinguish it from the rest. In a bizarre sense, it seems that its unfortunate place in history has actually given it a second life, as it continues to be performed to this day.

But more than that, I'm not sure how it holds up as the Holocaust Opera. There's a notion that somehow, by singing the final victory chorus, the children who performed it were defeating the Nazis. It's a very nice sentiment, to be sure. I certainly want to believe that music has that power. But somehow, I doubt it helped the 90% of the children in Terezin who were moved on to Auschwitz to be singing a victory song as they walked into the gas chambers.