1944 Opera Rises Above Tragic Birth : A musical work, composed by death-bound inmates in a Nazi show camp, survives as a tribute to the human spirit

Tragedy is no stranger to opera.

But the story behind the creation of the 1944 opera “The Emperor of Atlantis,” which will have its Los Angeles premiere tonight at the University Synagogue in West Los Angeles, is especially horrifying.

Because it’s true.

The one-act opera was written by composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien while they were imprisoned by the Nazis in the fortified village of Terezin in Czechoslovakia. Rehearsals were held within the artistic community that thrived, under dire conditions, among the inmates in the camp.

Singers practiced their parts, a set was designed and a small ensemble of musicians adapted the score to whatever instruments were on hand.

Before the opera could be performed, however, Ullmann was sent to Auschwitz where he was killed shortly after his arrival. About the same time, Kien’s parents were also sent to Auschwitz and the young poet, unable to bear life without them, voluntarily joined them on the death train.

After the war, most of the Terezin survivors who knew about the opera thought the score had been lost. But, as it often happens in opera, this tragic story has an element of redemption.

The score of “The Emperor of Atlantis” resurfaced in England in the early 1970s. In 1974, it had its world premiere in Amsterdam and since then has been performed by several ensembles in Europe and the United States. A European television version was filmed with famed soprano Teresa Stratas in one of the lead roles.

“It’s an incredible story,” said Judith Berman, a local conductor and arranger who is producing the Los Angeles premiere. It is a project she has been working on since 1977. “After all this time I still get emotional when I talk about it.”

Ullmann was born to a Jewish family in a town on the Moravian-Polish border in 1898, according to the book “Music in Terezin” by Joza Karas. Little is known about his early life--he studied music theory with Arnold Schoenberg and worked as a vocal coach in Prague.

On Sept. 8, 1942, he and his third wife arrived in Terezin aboard one of the four Nazi transports taking Jews and other enemies of the Nazis to the village that day.

Life is Terezin, located about 50 miles north of Prague, was dehumanizing and conditions were squalid. The food supply was meager, hygienic conditions far below standard and families were forcibly separated.

Still, it was not as horrible as life in such death camps as Auschwitz. There were no gas chambers and other instruments of mass death in Terezin.

Another important difference was that some cultural and education activities were allowed in Terezin by the Nazis. Some artistic expression in music, drama and the other arts was even encouraged.

Terezin, according to historians of the Holocaust, was a show camp, a place to bring the Red Cross for inspection tours.

“It was for them a shop window for their so-called liberalism,” said Kerry Woodward, an English conductor who has studied Ullmann’s works. “They knew that they would be visited by the Red Cross . . . so they set up this totally false situation.”

The inmates of Terezin made the most of the bits of artistic freedom their situation allowed. Before the war, music was the mainstay of cultural life among the Jewish intelligentsia in Eastern Europe. “It was not a pastime, entertainment, social obligation or fad to attend concerts and operatic performances,” wrote Karas. “It was rather a way of life, an integral part, as important as basic human needs such as food and drink.”

In Terezin, numerous chamber ensembles were formed, a small swing band played concerts, soloists gave recitals and a cabaret showcased inmate talent. There were opera and other vocal works, including several performances of Verdi’s Requiem with a chorus of 150.

But that chorus had to be continually renewed. The secret the Red Cross never seemed to learn was that Terezin was only a way station. With terrible regularity, inmates of the camp would be herded onto trains that would take them eastward to Auschwitz.

Of the almost 140,000 people imprisoned in Terezin from 1941-1945, according to Karas, only about 20,000 survived.

Ullmann was one of the key members of the musical community in the camp. He organized rehearsals and concerts and wrote reviews of performances. He wrote at least 16 works there, including “The Emperor of Atlantis.”

The plot concerns an emperor who believes himself so powerful that he can challenge death. Death, who is a character in the opera, retaliates by going on strike and declaring that no one can die.

Chaos ensues and the emperor begs Death to go back to work. Death agrees, but only if the emperor is his first victim.

“I think that today it would be a most topical opera, its tendency was so strongly anti-war,” Karel Berman (not related to Judith Berman) wrote in the 1960s. After his release from Terezin, Berman--a bass who was to play Death in the Terezin production--went on to become a soloist in the National Theatre in Prague.

It’s obvious that the story line was at least in part a satire on Hitler’s obsession with power. “There were two separate sets of lyrics for the opera that have been found,” said Woodward, speaking from his home in Holland. “One is much milder politically than the other. Perhaps that was done in an attempt to avoid censorship.”

In the fall of 1944 the work was being rehearsed for its premiere to be staged in a gymnasium. Ullmann continued to make alterations to the score, with his last changes dated October, 1944.

That was the month he was chosen to join those to go to the death camp. Aaron Kramer, a Long Island-based translator who has done an English adaptation of the opera, believes it probably did not have anything to do with the opera.

“It was probably just that his number came up,” Kramer said.

Karel Berman later wrote that Ullmann took the score with him to Auschwitz. But as it happened, shortly before boarding the train, Ullmann gave the handwritten scores of the opera and his other works to Emil Utitz, a psychologist imprisoned at the camp.

Utitz survived the war and as Ullmann had suggested, gave the music to another former inmate, Hugo Adler, who later wrote an extensive history of Terezin.

Adler tried to get the opera produced, but this was impossible in postwar England where he was living.

In 1973, Julie Woodward, an American musicology student in London, became friends with Adler’s son, who one day asked her if she was interested in looking through an opera score from Terezin. She and her husband, Kerry, went to Adler’s home.

“Just to go and see it was an unbelievable experience,” said Julie Woodward, who now lives in Upstate New York (she and Kerry Woodward have since divorced). “Just to hold it in my hands was something I will never forget.”

Over the next year, while pursuing his career as a conductor, Kerry Woodward put together a performing edition of the score. He conducted the debut in Amsterdam in a performance sponsored by Nederlands Opera.

Several other performances followed--the closest it came to Los Angeles was a staging in 1977 by the Spring Opera Company in San Francisco.

Judith Berman made several attempts to get local music groups to sponsor a performance. Not meeting with success, she decided to raise the funds herself, with her goal being $45,000 to pay for a production that would include a 14-piece union orchestra.

Although tonight’s performance is sold out, she now estimates that ticket sales plus donations will net only $35,000. The orchestra is intact, but other plans had to be modified or scaled down. “When it comes to costumes and sets,” Berman said, “we’ve had to be creative.”

The four singers she is using are all cantors. Two are from local synagogues, one is from Chicago and another from San Francisco.

The stage director is Loren Lester and Frank Fetta will conduct.

No one could doubt that the story behind the creation of the opera is a dramatic one. But would the opera itself be of interest if not for these circumstances? How does it stand on its own as a piece of music?

“I think it is a wonderful, evocative piece,” Kerry Woodward said. “None of the major opera companies have added it to their repertoire, but sometimes it takes a big opera company some time to take on something unfamiliar. They are cautious.”

Kramer agreed.

“I would have never taken on this project if I didn’t believe that the poetry was worthy of all this time and attention,” he said.

But he added that it was not possible to completely separate the story behind the opera and the work itself.

“I felt I was involved in a holy project,” Kramer said. “I felt that through what I was doing these people were living again, at least a little bit.”