‘Defiant Requiem’ screening to be concert prelude

By Eileen Wingard

Eileen Wingard
Eileen Wingard

LA JOLLA, California — Maestro Murry Sidlin is the creator of The Defiant Requiem, a concert-drama depicting the musical life of Terezin and integrating the entire Requiem by Guiseppi Verdi within its narration. The innovative American conductor will be on hand to introduce the documentary film, The Defiant Requiem at its screening this Thursday, March 12, 7:00 p.m. at the Lawrence Family JCC. It was previously part of the 2014 San Diego Jewish Film Festival.

The prize-winning film shows Sidlin bringing soloists and the chorus and orchestra of Washington D.C.’s Catholic University to Terezin, where they presented Sidlin’s concert-drama at the site where sixteen performances of Verdi’s Requiem took place during the Shoah. We see the impact of the experience on the young American college students.

During the years 1941-45, over 140,000 Jewish inmates were processed in the Nazi show ghetto of Terezin.  90,000 were sent on to the death camps, 33,000 died of illness and starvation in Terezin. Yet, because the Nazis allowed the Jewish Council to run the ghetto, Terezin was a place where creativity was allowed to flourish. There were artists and musicians who, while there, could practice their crafts.

In Terezin, the Verdi Requiem was performed with a chorus of 150 voices under the direction of Raphael Schechter, a Prague-trained conductor. This zealous musician taught his singers the entire requiem by rote, because he had but a single score from which to work.  He continually needed to train new singers, since there were regular deportations of chorus members to the ovens of Auschwitz. In 1944, Schechter, himself, was one of those deportees. He was sent to Auschwitz and two other camps before he died on a death march in March, 1945, shortly before the camps were liberated.

Sidlin, inspired by the courage and dedication of Schechter and his musicians, created his concert-drama, The Defiant Requiem. Narrated by Sidlin, with actors and video clips, as well as the musical forces of four soloists, a chorus and orchestra, his Defiant Requiem has been performed in the United States, Europe and Israel. Finally, San Diego audiences will be able to see a live performance of Sidlin’s Defiant Requiem on Thursday evening, May 7, 7:30 p.m. at the Jacobs  Music Center, to be performed by Jennifer Check, soprano, Ann McMahon Quintero, mezzo-soprano, Philip Webb, tenor, Nathan Stark, bass, the San Diego Master Chorale and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Sidlin.

I was privileged to attend the premiere of The Defiant Requiem with the Portland Symphony nearly a decade ago, where Sidlin was the resident conductor. It took place in a warehouse, with the audience sitting on hard benches, simulating what it might have felt like in Terezin. The chorus wore the striped garb of prisoners. That premiere performance was filmed and shown on public television. In December, 2010, when I was in Washington, D.C. I attended the dress rehearsal of The Defiant Requiem with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. When I contacted Murry Sidlin six weeks before the performance about tickets, I learned that the performance had been sold out for weeks and the dress rehearsal was all Murry could offer me.

Even the dress rehearsal was an impressive event. The orchestra musicians, singers and speakers all realized that they were performing a work with great impact, where the inspiring music of Verdi’s Requiem took on an added layer of meaning. Through this music, the Terezin inmates had sung their defiance, acclaimed their freedom of spirit and predicted the demise of their captors. The May 7 performance is presented by the Anti-Defamation League, San Diego. The May 7 Defiant Requiem should be a must-see for all, and the March 12 documentary film serves as a good introduction to the live performance in May.

For the May 7 performance, contact tgillies@adl.org or call 858-565-6896 for tickets. For the March 12 documentary, call 858-457-3030 or tickets@lfjcc.com

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Wingard is a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony and a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.

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