Murry Sidlin, creator & conductor
Callan White & Kelley Hinman, actors
Jennifer Check, soprano
Ann McMahon Quintero, mezzo-soprano
Bruce Sledge, tenor
Jongmin Park, bass
Asheville Symphony
Voices of Terezín Remembrance
Erin Freeman, director
Allison Thorp, assistant director
Presented by The Defiant Requiem Foundation. Proceeds to benefit Carolina Jews for Justice.
Sponsorship packages available at defiantrequiem.org/asheville.
Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, a profoundly moving multimedia concert-drama, combines the magnificent music of Verdi with video and narration, to tell the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) who performed the celebrated Verdi Requiem while experiencing the depths of human degradation. With only a smuggled score, they performed the famous oratorio sixteen times, including one performance before senior SS officials from Berlin and an International Red Cross delegation. Conductor Rafael Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”
Created and conducted by Maestro Murry Sidlin, Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín features a full performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass, video testimony from survivors of the original chorus, segments of the Nazi propaganda film made at Terezín in 1944, and actors to relay the impassioned story of how and why these Jewish prisoners, who faced death every day, chose to learn and perform a Latin, Catholic mass during their darkest hours.
