Where Young Things Are

By Heather Won Tesoriero

Ela Stein Weissberger was 11 years old in 1943, when she landed the role of the Cat in the first performance of Brundibar, a children's opera about a gang of kids who take on a greedy organ-grinder. While not a glamorous production, it resonated deeply with its audience, the prisoners of the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. "People loved to come and sing along," recalls Weissberger, who was in the camp for three years. "Especially the victory song."

Five years ago, Maurice Sendak came across the long-buried opera. He was electrified. "It's a very simple story, the most basic of fairy tales," says Sendak, the 74-year-old creator of the picture-book classic Where the Wild Things Are, but it spoke to a "situation that has been part of my flesh and blood and bones my whole life." The son of Polish-immigrant Jews, Sendak had a childhood marred by a "dense, terrible aura" of the Holocaust, as news of perishing loved ones hung over the family home.

Sendak decided to revive the opera. He asked Pulitzer-prizewinning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) to write a new libretto. Kushner, immediately drawn to what he calls the opera's "timeless message of the necessity to stand up to bullies," was also enchanted by the appealing staccato of the Czech language and has folded some of its nuances into his new version. In an earlier English version, the names Aninku and Pepicek became Annette and Little Joe, cutting out delicious linguistic details from the piece. "It sounded like a 1950s biker film," says Kushner.

When it opens at the Chicago Opera Theater on June 4, the new Brundibar won't be like a biker film. Nor will it look like an opera about the Holocaust. Sendak has washed the production design with light. He has shifted his color palette from subdued hues to vivid primary schemes. Says director Thor Steingraber: "There are no yellow stars on the children's coats. There's no reference to concentration camps. The set is strictly a lovely Bohemian town."

For Sendak, who has always resisted the label of children's author ("I don't even know what that means," he says), this is a way of making peace with his past. It's his first acknowledged work for children. And he can let go of some of the emotional residue of his childhood. "I wanted to handle my situation creatively, where you turn the bad or the evil feelings into something you can live with and explore and even exploit."

It will be a visit to the past too for Ela Stein Weissberger, now 72. One of two survivors from the original cast, she will give lectures about her life after several of the shows. She also hopes to join the kids onstage one night. Says Weissberger: "With Brundibar, we forgot hunger, we forgot where we were." --By Heather Won Tesoriero