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Hans Krása’s opera for children, Brundibár, premiered in 1942 at the Prague Vinohrady Jewish Boys’ Orphanage and was subsequently given fifty-five performances by the children prisoners of the Terezin concentration camp. The score was smuggled into the camp by an inmate, the opera’s conductor Rudolph Freudenfeld, son of the director of the Vinohrady Orphanage. Brundibár is a small masterpiece, magical, political, and musically glorious. It’s also only twenty-five minutes long. Maurice Sendak and I recently presented the opera at the New Victory Theater in New York, directed by Tony Taccone with Maurice’s designs and my version of the libretto. I wrote a curtain raiser to make an hour-long evening. But the Girafffe! is an imaginary account of how Rudolph Freudenfeld came to smuggle Brundibár into Terezin.

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(A little girl sits on her bed in her bedroom. On the bed beside her is a big leather suitcase, closed shut.