The multi-media concert/drama April 15 tells the
story of Jewish prisoners who memorized and performed Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem
at Terezin, a Jewish ghetto and prison during World War II.
Defiant Requiem combines Verdi's
magnificent music with testimony from survivors of the original chorus, a
propaganda film about the camp, and actors speaking the words of prisoners
about their experience. Edgar Krasa, who was a chorus member at Terezin, will give a pre-concert
talk.
The
USC Symphony Orchestra concert will be the first time the work has been
performed in the Southeast. Defiant Requiem, created by conductor Murry Sidlin,
has been performed only 13 times previously including at Terezin and the
Kennedy Center. Sidlin will conduct the performance by the USC Symphony
Orchestra and the USC Concert Choir, USC Chorus, the York County Choral
Society, Mars Hill College Chamber Singers and soloists Tina Stallard, Janet
Hopkins, Walter Cuttino and Jacob Will.
The
7:30 p.m. event will take place at the Koger Center for the Arts. Krasa’s talk
will be at 6:30 p.m. at the center.
Sidlin
first came across the remarkable story of Verdi at Terezin in the late 1990s.
"I
was walking down a street past a bookstore that had a sale rack outside,” he
said. “I reached in and pulled out a book called Music in Terezin. It was like being struck by lightning.”
"This
is my personal mission," said Sidlin, who is on the conducting faculty of
the School of Music at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.,
and former dean of the school.
Located
in what is now the Czech Republic, Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt) was
presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement. In fact about 60,000
residents died from starvation and illness and another 88,000 were deported to
Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
Many
well-educated people including a number of prominent artists were sent to Terezin
where they organized orchestras, chamber and jazz ensembles, theater groups and
art classes. One was conductor Rafael Schächter, who formed a 200-member strong
chorus. With a single smuggled score of Verdi’s Requiem, committed to memory by the prisoners, the chorus performed
the famous oratorio 16 times, including once before SS officials and a Red
Cross delegation.
Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” A few weeks after the final performance, he died in transit to Auschwitz.
Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” A few weeks after the final performance, he died in transit to Auschwitz.
Defiant Requiem has had a profound impact
on those who have heard and seen it since it was first staged in 2002.
“The
Requiem itself is almost unbearably
powerful on its own - a searing tone
poem about the end of the world, operatic in scope and run through with
celestial melodies and cascades of fire and brimstone,” wrote Stephen Brooks in
The Washington Post. “But Sidlin's
setting of the music, incorporating film of the camp, interviews with
survivors, and actors describing the dramatic background, was handled with both
dignity and power, and pushed the requiem to even more harrowing depths and
exalting heights...”
Season
tickets for the 2012 – 2013 USC Symphony Orchestra season will be available
before and after the concert.
Individual
tickets $25; $20 for seniors and USC faculty and staff; $8 for students. All
performances take place at the Koger Center for the Arts, Assembly and Greene
streets, Columbia. For more information and to purchase tickets call (803)
251-2222 or go to http://www.capitoltickets.com
