SAN DIEGO (Press Release) – A smuggled score. Courageous Jewish prisoners. A performance of the Verdi Requiem Mass. In an act of defiance and resistance to their Nazi captors, the performance in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezin) during World War II is captured in a moving multi-media, concert-drama brought to San Diego by the Anti-Defamation League. The concert will be conducted by the program’s creator Murry Sidlin on Thursday, May 7, 7:30 p.m. at Jacobs Music Center/Copley Symphony Hall.
The concert-drama combines the magnificent orchestration of Verdi with video testimony from surviving members of the original prisoner choir, actors embedded in the orchestra, and original Nazi propaganda film footage made at Theresienstadt.
“The performance is powerful, dramatic and inspirational, with a contemporary message of hope,” said Tammy Gillies, Regional Director of ADL San Diego. “It will leave audiences celebrating the rise of the human spirit and the value of life and living.”
Defiant Requiem:Verdi at Terezin has been performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln Center in New York City; Symphony Hall in Atlanta, in Jerusalem, Budapest, St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, in Terezin itself; and most recently in Berlin.The ADL co-chairs for the project were Caryn Viterbi and the late Erna Viterbi. The concert-drama will feature the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and Master Chorale. Featured soloists include soprano Jennifer Check, mezzo-soprano Ann McMahon Quintero, tenor Philip Webb, and bass Nathan Stark.
All ticket sales, sponsorships and funds raised through the Defiant Requiem project will benefit ADL San Diego’s Endowment Fund – Lessons from the Holocaust: Changing Hearts and Minds. As a leader in Holocaust education in San Diego, it is ADL’s mission to eliminate anti-Semitism, hate and bigotry and secure justice and fair treatment for all.
For more information: http://sandiego.adl.org/event/defiantrequiem/ To purchase tickets: http://sandiegosymphony.com/defiant.aspx
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I saw the Defiant Requiem at its Jerusalem performance, and found it immensely moving.