Opera Orlando presents Brundibár / Vedem, an Opera for the Community production that stages two works born inside the Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II as one. Vedem frames the evening: the true story of teenage boys imprisoned in the ghetto who ran a secret underground magazine of the same name, its libretto drawn from the actual poems of Petr Ginz, Hanuš Hachenburg, Zdeněk Ornest, and Josef Taussig — boys who had no reason to believe anyone would ever read what they wrote, and who wrote anyway. Within that frame, Hans Krása's beloved children's opera Brundibár comes to life exactly as it did in the ghetto itself, where imprisoned children performed it more than fifty times: young Aninka and Pepíček outwitting an evil organ grinder to save their ailing mother, reclaiming the town marketplace with nothing but their voices.

Experience this remarkable double vision at Orlando Family Stage's Universal Orlando Foundation Theatre, presented in partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. Stage director Kaley Karis Smith, a 2023 OPERA America Women Directors Grant winner, and conductor Whitney Reader both make their Company debuts leading a cast of Opera Orlando's own Youth Company and 2026-27 season Studio Artists — Sarah Kathryn Curtis and Benjamin Ruiz as Vedem's central soloists, and David Kahng in the title role of Brundibár.