24-25 Program Book - Flipbook - Page 65
Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín (2002)
A CONCERT-DRAMA CREATED BY MURRY SIDLIN
Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín is a concertdrama that combines film and music. It tells
the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners
in the Theresienstadt Concentration
Camp (Terezín) during World War II, who
performed Giuseppe Verdi’s powerful Messa
da Requiem while experiencing the depths
of human degradation.
From a single smuggled score, they
performed the Requiem at least sixteen
times, including one performance before
senior SS officials from Berlin and an
International Red Cross delegation. They were forced to reconstitute the choir three
times as members were transported to Auschwitz. Imprisoned conductor Rafael
Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”
Created and written by Murry Sidlin, Defiant Requiem combines the music of Verdi
with video testimony from survivors of the original Terezín chorus and footage
from the 1944 Nazi propaganda film about Theresienstadt. The performance also
includes actors who speak the words of Schächter and other Jewish prisoners
who faced death every day, explaining how and why they chose to learn and
perform a Latin Catholic mass during their darkest hours. The performances
came to symbolize resistance and defiance, demonstrating the prisoners’ courage
to confront the worst of mankind with the best of mankind. Defiant Requiem
has been presented worldwide more than 50 times since its Portland, Oregon,
premiere in 2002. On three occasions—May 2006, May 2009, and June 2009—Sidlin
has led performances in the Czech town of Terezín. In 2013, Sidlin received the
Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor for his extraordinary efforts to keep alive
the memory of Rafael Schächter.
CLASSICAL SERIES VERDI’S DEFIANT REQUIEM 65
