Brundibar



Yesterday, on the way home from teaching at RVCC, I had one of those amazing NPR driveway moments where I just sat and listened and was transported into another world.  The topic of this radio show was a children's opera, "Brundibar", which was written in the Terezin concentration camp and performed by a desperately rotating group of children there.  One of the survivors, Ela Stein Weissberger, has taken it upon herself to revive the work and the story of the children who lived through its performance.

I marvel at how a caged bird can sing, and yet I know the transcendental power of music.  After studying Spanish theater of the civil war, I also know how the arts are ways to critique government indirectly.  In this operetta, Brundibar represented much more than simply a villainous cat.  It represented Hitler and all the wrongs enacted on helpless people.

We musicians, we theater people, we live the art of the ephemeral.  As I named this blog ages ago: Music is Change.  Life is change.  But I don't want to stop creating.

I wonder what this journey will lead me to.

I wonder if I will be able to play my flute when I am in Poland.  Somehow, that has become very important to me overnight.


This is the program I listened to:
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/19/365195757/joyful-opera-performed-in-nazi-concentration-camp-revived-in-chicago

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