Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

Few people have been as ill-equipped, yet as eager to be an opera performer as Peter Gaspar. It was 1944 in the Terezin concentration camp, and the seven-year-old Czech Jew knew it was "a big deal".

"It meant better food - fresh fruit, a glass of milk a day, soup that wasn't just dishwater - plus a relief from boredom," he says.

Jewish Czech actress Vlaska Schoenova, who befriended Gaspar and his mother, got him an audition for the performance, which revealed one slight handicap: he could not sing.