Letter from Florida: Let us take a stand together hand in hand, Hans Krasa's Brundibar from Sarasota Opera

Hans Krasa: Brundibar - Kayla Farrell (Brundibar) - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Raise up your voice: Intolerance through the voices of children: Prologue created by Martha Collins and Jesse Martins, Hans Krasa: Brundibar; director: Martha Collins, conductor Jesse Martins, Sarasota Youth Opera; Sarasota Opera at Sarasota Opera House, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 8 November 2025

In his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras finds that Sarasota Youth Opera's performance of Hans Krasa's Brundibar, alongside a prologue designed to introduce the work today, touches in the right places

To touch the audience in the right place – how's that for an operatic golden rule? Self-evident as is the worthiness of this pursuit, particularly when children are involved, Sarasota Opera goes much farther. With its Brundibar, the company gives little in the way of mixed messages, aiming tight for that most vital of organs, the human heart.

As a matter of language, there are many telltale signs of agonizing and deliberating over handing this subject matter and its exposition over to young hearts and minds. And in creating from scratch a companion piece that helps shine a light on the point of the main attraction, conductor Jesse Martins and Martha Collins (better known in Sarasota as Stage Director) show they are all too aware that children are barraged with the phrase, “use your words.”

The mouthful that is Raise up your voice: Intolerance through the voices of children, a prologue referred to here as RUYV, may could be a work that stands up next to others it plays with, and, it needs work. As with any effective piece of its type, it is practical to the extent it can be performed in its current iteration solo, to introduce Brundibar as today, or in tandem with any number of other works that agree with it in purpose.

At its core, this prologue is a message in a bottle, a love-letter and call to action for adults, from children. The children want for adults to act like it, to be better human beings. “You know this!” the children seem to be pleading at us. The children of Ha'shoah are not the only ones pleading never forget.

Prologue: Raise up your voice - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

The power-hungry mix no messages about acting on the hatred and cruelty, physical and emotional pain, hunger and murder they inflict on the world and its children. Through their eyes and hearts and their stories, RUYV adds a dose of in-your-face gravitas to the either cryptic or tortured or sanguine messages of Brundibar.

Each of nine tableaux isolates a child narrating – from soaring rhetorical turns to stirrings of hurt and confusion, the disappointment resultant from falling way short of stated ideals. RUYV travels from the starkness of Nazi concentration camps to the terrors of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the civil rights horrors of Iran. It returns home, to the hard truths about America's past.

This prologue shines a light even closer at home. One tableau had children randomly situated on the stage – as one testifies about their own daily mistreatment at the hands of malcontents, and then turns away from the audience. And then another, and then another, and another.

RUYV stays with the children in Brundibar, as it also dots the map of spaceship earth across place and time, all too often having to stop at the abuses of the power-hungry, the taker in control of the shadow of death.

“He who loves so much his mother and father and his native land is our friend and he can play with us.”

The closing chorus to Brundibar the opera pleads at us progenitors of the past through the eyes, and hearts, of children survivors of Ha’Shoah. This ending is a collective consummation of experience – experiencing the conditions of the Jewish camp-ghetto at Thereseinstadt (Terezin) here, and the experience of encountering the power-hungry and bloodthirsty wherever they squirm.

Adolf Hoffmeister’s libretto, as per the oft used English translation by Joza Karas,  comes full of purposefully naive and clumsy attempts at rhythmic verse via lexical play, with only a biding nod to the feet in a metric line. Hoffmeister sets a concrete example children can relate to, and the choices made regarding his words by Sarasota Education staff, and evidently these children-players themselves, demonstrate accepting the responsibility of sensitivity for an audience of children. This responsibility is denied to the children of abuse.

“He who loves so much his mother and father and his native land is our friend and he can play with us.”

The original libretto read like this when Brundibar was submitted for competition in Prague, circa 1938, as Nazism consumed Europe. Hoffmeister enlisted the support of poet Emil Saudek to reword the ending in order for it to reflect the conditions at Terezin, where the opera was performed 55 times. At one point or another, some 15,000 children 14 years of age or younger walked the ghetto at Terezin, “fewer than 150 survived the war” records at the United States Holocaust Museum find. There was much artistic life at the “Julliard for Jews,” to be taken later at the death camps.

“He who loves justice and will abide by it, and who is not afraid, is our friend and can play with us.”

– Emil Saudek’s revision

Back when Planet Hugill covered a performance of Brundibar for the first time, Robert H. described the Imagine Festival show as “given in an imaginative and direct production which did nothing to complicate issues.” [See Robert's review of the Mahogany Opera performance in 2015] There is no better way to put it for today’s performance of Brundibar in Sarasota. The treatment of the language component underscored this approach. “[T]he opera is full of tunes, and his instrumental writing is imaginative and complex,” Robert added of Hans Krasa’s music. Yes.

Hans Krasa: Brundibar - Giuliana Bordes (Aninku), Cara Carlson (Pepicek ) - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

The role of Brundibar the organ grinder is a prototype of every stock character of its kind from the arts – literature, poetry, theater, you name it. Don’t tell him that though. The children at Terezin needed to keep the true identify of Brundibar close to their hearts. As an act of defiance, the opera’s story was an inside-joke.

Such a vainglorious creature as Brundibar, obsessed with appearances and allergic to mirrors, needs to think they are the end all be all. These characters are a reflection of flesh and blood people, historical figures from spaceship earth’s past.

And so, this is Brundibar. Granted, he is underdeveloped in the opera, a bargain-basement variety of villain. It was necessary to keep up that ruse. But to method actor, to a thespian like Lawrence Olivier, the traits stem from the same wrong organs.

For the young lady Kayla Farrel of Sarasota, Brundibar has not any of this kind of menace, not any of this kind of malice. Because the peace in a child does not understand power-hungry, children do not understand Brundibar. And well they shouldn’t.

Sarasota’s Brundibar takes a cue from Uri Gellar, a handheld organ is his spoon. He wiles and seduces the throngs at the town square. The crowd swoons and sways at his waving hand, as he promises to cure all that ails, sending them into a fugue state. He grinds the wrong organs, and the crowd shows canines. Brundibar might sick them on the children, as pitchfork village folk transfixed by Brundibar’s charms. Brundibar might even sit and watch, egging on the savagery.

“He who loves justice and will abide by it, and who is not afraid, is our friend and can play with us.”

– Emil Saudek’s revision

The Aninku of Giuliana Bordes is a wonderfully musical friend, and quite a good stage friend to her cohorts on the boards. Bordes helped Cara Carlson, Pepicek here, by staying nearby – at hand’s length and earshot, to relate musical messages. Bordes seems to have played no small part in relaying Jesse Martins’ conducting directions from the stage. She earned the audience’s cutes with her movements the more, whether dancing a natural jig or striking a natural pose.

Kai Casey kept things under control as the policeman, dragging Brundibar off to the clink near the end. As is often the case in modern productions, the enchanted animals, friends to the children – a sparrow, a cat, and a dog – were shared by multiple players, three each. All the children here were delightful theater troupe representatives. The minuet line-dance was cuteness personified.

Being led out by police escort was not the last the children at Terezin saw of Brundibar, or in many another production today. The organ grinder has a “goodbye but not farewell” monologue near the end, a kind of “I’ll be back,” “you’ve not heard the last of my insatiable appetite,” forewarning for children.

Krasa and Hoffmeister inserted another lesson the souls of children learnt at Terezin. Takers need minions, and minions need to follow. Any cold-blooded, power-hungry tool will do. Nothing new under the sun. Sarasota kneecapped Brundibar’s worst impulses once again by eliminating his platform, saving the children from his diatribe of darkness.

Sarasota Opera’s Brundibar ended with this way of looking at Hoffmeister's recitation, his way of shining the light real bright in here: “If you love this land and want the tyrant’s end, then you just need a friend. Let us take a stand together hand in hand.” To stop anyone from grinding you in the wrong organ – how's that for a golden point to all the above? For there are children in every one of us, and we will be the better for it to stay as golden as we can.

Hans Krasa: Brundibar - Kayla Farrell (Brundibar) - Sarasota Opera (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Saturday November 8, 2025 at 5pm

Raise up your voice: Intolerance through the voices of children
Prologue created by Martha Collins and Jesse Martins

“We hold these truths”
Music: Antonin Dvorak
Text: The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

On a Sunny Evening
Music: Cesar Franck and Antonin Dvorak
Text: Anonymous, by children of barracks L318 and L417, Theresienstadt (Terezin) Jewish camp-ghetto

It All Depends on How You Look at it
Music: Antonin Dvorak
Text: Miroslav Kosek

To Olga
Music: Giacomo Puccini
Text: Alena Muckova-Synkova, Terezin survivor

The Little Partridge
Music: Komitas Armenian Folk Song
English version: Martha Collins

Oh, Freedom
Traditional Spiritual

“Lost Dreams”
Poem by Mohangany Brim

“When the Whole World is Silent”
Music: Giacomo Puccini
Text: Malala Yousafzai

Incidental Music: Jesse Martins

Brundibar (A children’s opera in two acts)
Hans Krasa, music
Adolf Hoffmeister, text; English version by Joza Karas

2015 Sarasota Opera Production

Overture for a small orchestra - Hans Krasa

Lullaby
Music and text: Ilse Weber
Written while at Terezin
Arrangement: Jesse Martins
English text: Martha Collins

Conductor Jesse Martins
Chorus Sarasota Youth Opera
Stage Director Martha Collins
Costume Designer Howard Tsvi Kaplan
Lighting Designer Ken Yunker
Hair and Makeup Designer Sue Schaefer
Assistant Conductors Andrew Downs, Lisandra Rodriguez-Varela

Cast

Brundibar Kayla Farrell
Aninka (Annette) Giuliana Bordes
Pepicek (Little Joe) Cara Carlson
Policeman Kai Casey
Sparrows Mia Moreno, Isla Outerbridge, Briana Wadsworth
Cats Vittoria Morales-Franco, Abril Sanchez-Rodriguez, Elle Zuka
Dogs Yaelle Katz, Aria Tillman, Mia Trainor
Milkman Olivia Novak
Ice Cream Seller Eitan Katz
Baker Jocelyne Wilkins
Mother Sophie Lunsford
Doctor Dylan Alan

Sarasota Opera began attracting international attention with the Masterworks Revival Series, which presents neglected works of artistic merit and made history in 2016 by completing the Verdi Cycle, a 28-season effort to produce every work written by Giuseppe Verdi. Sarasota Opera is now the only opera company in the world to have presented every work, in every version and Maestro DeRenzi is the only conductor to have conducted all the composer’s works. Sarasota is widely considered Verdi’s home in the United States, and second only to the composer’s home in Busseto, Italy. 

As destination-opera par excellence, people from all corners of the world come for Sarasota Opera’s Winter season, with its world-class productions that range from early Italian Bel Canto to contemporary American opera. After the $20 million-dollar historic renovation and restoration of a 1926 building in 2008, Sarasota Opera House has been described as “a delightful 1000 seat art deco Opera House, whose acoustics are superb (Opera magazine).”

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