Vividly Atmospheric
Music by composers
in Theresienstadt -
heard by
HOWARD SMITH'The Nash players' programme is presented with their customary aplomb ...'
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The spirit of life at Terezín, a half-way house to Nazi death camps, is best conveyed in the original children's folk opera, devised by Krása and enlivened with a storyline created from the Terezín children's poetry. In its 1944 form this is a rare illustration of hope and heroism within the most callous and inhuman of imaginable settings.
In April 1944, as the Luftwaffe had lost the air war against the Allies, and about a year before the Red Army took Berlin, the Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester and the Mozartchor, Damenchor des Deutschen Opernhauses, staged and recorded a performance of the Humpedinck opera. At a time in such close proximity to the gross misuse of Theresienstadt, the Hänsel und Gretel theme -- saving children being (abortively) shoved into an oven by a wicked witch -- bore some resemblance to the Nazis' 'final solution' at such unspeakable destinations as Treblinka and Auschwitz...
Copyright © 2 April 2013
Howard Smith,
Masterton, New Zealand
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