Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, a profoundly moving multimedia concert-drama, combines the magnificent music of Verdi with video testimonials and narration to tell the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) who performed the celebrated Verdi Requiem while experiencing the depths of human degradation. With only a smuggled score, they performed the famous oratorio sixteen times, including one performance before senior SS officials from Berlin and an International Red Cross delegation. Conductor Rafael Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”
This powerful presentation is coming to Chicago in a one-time effort to raise significant funds to benefit the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago’s Holocaust Community Services program, which lends sustenance, dignity and hope to Holocaust survivors in the sunset of their lives.
This concert is approximately 115 minutes with no intermission.
- From http://cso.org/