This Intervention describes some aspects of the complex creative dynamics of creating a children’s opera, involving playwright/librettist, theatrical director, composer and actor–performers. The composer Martyn Harry provides an insider’s account of the nonlinear collaborative process by which the opera came into existence, and some of the creative tensions and negotiated solutions that were involved.
ABSTRACT This article examines constructions of national Christian tradition in 1950s England, focusing on images of deadness and revivification in two products of the religious drama movement: the York Mystery and other plays presented at the 1951 Festival of Britain, and Benjamin Britten's 1958 children's opera Noye's Fludde.
Abstract
The paper focuses on the opera Brundibár. The authorial couple – composer Hans Krasa and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister – wrote it in the period of growing interest of artists in pedagogical aspects of the works of art. The changed social climate, however, meant for the work an unplanned journey – during the Second World War it was performed inside the Terezin ghetto by its inhabitants. The human message of the fairy tale story has thus been elevated into a higher symbolic frame – a resistance against the arrogance of power and violence. Especially the post-war era followed this symbolism. The author of the paper contemplates the innovative interpretative levels whose ambition is to cross the traditional performance frame of the work and to find connections with problems of contemporary society.
‘Like Seeing Normal Life’: children’s opera Brundibár in Theresienstadt (1943–1944) and the power of scenographic metaphors