Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín

Join us for this special performance of Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín by the Lamont School of Music’s Lamont Symphony Orchestra, Lamont Choirs, and the Colorado Hebrew Chorale.

Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin tells the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners of the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezín): while experiencing the depths of human degradation, they performed Verdi’s celebrated Requiem sixteen times.

More than just a performance of the Verdi Requiem, Defiant Requiem is a powerful tribute to the inspired leadership of conductor Rafael Schachter, who told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” Their performances came to symbolize resistance and defiance and demonstrated the prisoners’ courage to confront the worst of mankind with the best of mankind.

Created by Maestro Murry Sidlin, president of the Defiant Requiem Foundation, this concert-drama combines the magnificent music of Verdi with video testimony from survivors of the original Terezín chorus and footage from a 1944 Nazi propaganda film about Theresienstadt, as well as actors speaking the words of conductor Rafael Schachter and other Terezín prisoners.