Brundibar

Music: Hans Krása (1899–1944)
Libretto: Adolf Hoffmeister (1902–1973)

The performance was introduced with an authentic recollection by Michaela Vidláková, who experienced Brundibár in Terezín at the age of six.

The Society for Music Education, founded in Prague in 1934, announced a competition in March 1938 “in an effort to revive a considerably neglected area of composition in our country – an opera intended for youth and performed entirely or predominantly by children and youth.” The deadline for the competition, supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, was set for mid-October. The composer Hans Krása and the librettist Adolf Hoffmeister (1902–1973) submitted the opera Brundibár to the competition. However, the Munich Agreement led to the cession of the Czechoslovak borderlands under Hitler's pressure, and the competition could not continue.

The opera was performed at the turn of 1941 and 1942 in a Jewish orphanage in Prague in an improvised production. The director Rudolf Freudenfeld (Rudolf Franěk after the war, 1921–1983), who later directed the Terezín performance, often recalled that production. His father, Otto Freudenfeld (1891–1944), the director of the Jewish orphanage on Belgická Street, celebrated his fiftieth birthday in 1941. The residents and artists, who could no longer perform publicly due to their origin, prepared a festive programme for him. The score was not available (the original score was not found until 1972), so a small ensemble performed according to a piano reduction. “In July 1943, we were also included in the transport to Terezín,” Rudolf Freudenfeld recalled. In Terezín, new rehearsals for Brundibár began, and Hans Krása created a new score from the piano reduction. The premiere of the original version took place on 25 September 1999 at the National Theatre – Kolowrat Theatre, performed by the Jiřina Marková School of Music and Singing (now the Children's Opera Prague) and musically directed by František Preisler Jr. Since then, many children around the world have sung the final chorus: “Brundibár is defeated, fleeing far away. Beat the drum, we have won the war.”