In June 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners performed Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem Mass” to a group of Nazi officers at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The performance was a subversive and artistic act of defiance by the Jewish prisoners. In 2008, Maestro Murry Sidlin founded The Defiant Requiem Foundation to commemorate the event. Sidlin conducts Verdi’s “Requiem Mass” alongside testimonies and footage from the concentration camps.
Host Frank Stasio talks with Sidlin about the legacy of the performance and the act of commemoration. Sidlin conducts“The Defiant Requiem: Verdi Requiem at Terezin” with the UNC Symphony Orchestra and campus vocal ensembles at Memorial Hallat the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m.