Brundibar opens...

In bringing this opera to the stage, I had questions as to where the child performers would come from. The time commitment was short – from Jan 5 thru the performances the last week of the month – but intense. Most days the rehearsals went from 3-6pm and the two weekends prior to performance both days were long rehearsal days. The performances were Sunday thru Friday, so most of the school day would be missed that week.
About half of the children were home schooled which I have come to know is not unusual if a child wants to participate in musical events. One of our cast families had five children in the opera, and the mom was home schooling them. I can only think events like this give home school moms some respite to what must be a major challenge. Other children came from some of the charter schools in the city, and there were a goodly number of suburban kids from private schools who participated. Karen had any number of contacts with music teachers in the area that helped. But as the opera developed children were continually dropping out or being added to the cast, it was wild! A week before the opening, one of the major roles still wasn’t casted. Through all this I tried to assemble the program, but finally gave up until things stabilized and bios and pictures could be taken with some surety that these were the children that would perform.
As we approached the opening things started to gel. The children in the lead learned there parts – the two leads were 7 and 8 years old – so their growth was stunning from week one to the opening. But all of the other children learned also. Following each rehearsal Karen gave them ‘notes’, which is a critique of their performance. It was not unusual for 50-60 items to be noted and reviewed. All done in good humor and accepted the same way.
The opening was a major success. The weekend section of the Inquirer had a small piece so with that added publicity we had a sell out, about 300 people. This was the only performance where the audience was mostly adult. The opera is a story within a story set in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, so as you might expect it was quite emotional. As it ends each child speaks the name of a child who was lost and then the set fades to black. I watched the audience at the end and there were more than a few in tears. It was extremely well done and I think the audience was quite appreciative of the efforts of these children. The rest of the week the audiences were school classes from the city and suburbs, one class came from Harrisburg. The ages ranged from 2nd grade to 8th grade and again they were engrossed in this simple but moving story.
In the next post I’ll talk a little about the finances of a production like this, and funding for the arts in general in the city.