Season Announcement: Leonardo Capalbo Sings Special Performance of Verdi's Requiem

Verdi’s Requiem Commemorates 75th Anniversary of Liberation from Nazi Occupation

Leonardo Capalbo will be featured in a very special performance of Verdi’s Requiem to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camp at Theresienstadt. Presented by the Voices of Resistance and the Defiant Requiem Foundation, Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín is a concert drama inspired by the real life prisoners who bravely faced their captors through the strength and power of music with performances of Verdi’s Requiem.

From the Defiant Requiem Foundation: “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín is a concert-drama conceived, created, and conducted by Maestro Murry Sidlin. It combines a full performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass with video testimony from survivors of the original Terezín chorus and footage from the 1944 Nazi propaganda film about Theresienstadt. The performance also includes actors who speak the words of imprisoned conductor Rafael Schächter and others. With only a single smuggled score, they performed the celebrated 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.’ Defiant Requiem is not just a performance of the Verdi Requiem, but a tribute to the inspired leadership of Rafael Schächter who was forced to reconstitute the choir three times as members were transported to Auschwitz. The concert drama explains through music, personal survivor testimony and narration why the performances in 1943 and 1944 provided a beacon of hope and survival for the prisoner choir and its audience.”

The performance takes place on May 3 , 2020 at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, Netherlands