Sing with us in Prague!

The Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, a Concert Drama

In a concentration camp called Terezín (or Theresienstadt), one hour outside of Prague, there were sixteen performances of the Verdi Requiem during the years 1943-1944. Determined not to allow the Nazis to crush their spirit, the inmates there used music, poetry, and art to survive their circumstances. Although the Requiem successfully bolstered the spirits of singers and listeners at Terezín, the tragic reality of their final doom was felt. Of the 140,000 inmates, including 17,000 children, most did not survive.

Conductor Murry Sidlin has created a brilliant multi-media concert drama with actors, chorus, soloists, orchestra and video projections which tells the story of the conductor Raphael Schaechter and his choruses who learned this great work by rote from a single vocal score. The performance will take place in an old factory building in Terezín, on the afternoon of the Terezín Commemorative Day, following morning ceremonies.

The performance, on Sunday May 17, 2009, is the afternoon featured event of a day long commemorative celebration of Terezín.

We are taking applications now for this once in a lifetime singing experience. You will know if you have been accepted by September 30, 2008.

MORE PRAGUE/TEREZÍN DETAILS

TRAVEL
You will be responsible for making your own travel arrangements to and from Prague.

HOTEL
Mövenpick Hotel Prague
Mozartova 1
150 00 Prague, Czech Republic
http://www.moevenpick-hotels.com/en/pub/your_hotels/worldmap/prague/overview.cfm

The four-star Mövenpick Hotel Prague is located only five minutes from the centre of Prague and within easy reach of all of the city’s major tourist attractions, leading restaurants and nightlife venues. The trendy Andel district can be reached on foot in around 5 minutes, and has many restaurants and shops. The hotel is well connected by public transportation.

On-site guest amenities include wireless Internet connection throughout the hotel, the Mövenpick Restaurant, the Giardino Restaurant, an elegant lounge bar, the panoramic Tower cocktail lounge and a modern Health and Fitness Centre.

We will have our daily rehearsals and classes in the conference rooms of the hotel.

GUIDED SIGHTSEEING TOURS
There will be two guided sightseeing tours; one of Prague and one of Terezín. Both tours will be a combination of a motor coach and walking tour. Please be aware that there are seven hills in Prague! On the Friday Terezín tour, conductor Murry Sidlin will accompany the chorus to the cramped basement space the prisoners had practiced in, part of an old military barracks building in the heart of Terezín. He will give a short talk about the significance of our being there and what rehearsals had been like in that dark, damp stone basement.

MEALS
You will have breakfast in the hotel every morning. There will be a BCF dinner on the first night and a dinner cruise on the last night. In Terezín, there will be a box dinner in between two tech rehearsals and a box lunch on the day of the concert. All other meals will be on your own.

CHORAL PREPARATION
Initial choral preparation will be done by Frank Nemhauser, BCF’s Music Director, and the BCF Faculty. There will be a three-hour piano rehearsal with conductor Murry Sidlin on Wednesday evening. Tutti orchestra rehearsals begin on Friday.

RELAXED DAY
Thursday will be a relaxed day, with only a morning rehearsal to attend. You may want to plan to attend a concert, the opera, or a theatre event that evening.

THE TEREZÍN COMMEMORATION
Every year on the third Sunday in May, there is a nationwide act of remembrance called the Terezín Commemoration. This is typically attended by top-ranking officials representing the Czech Parliament, Government, courts, political parties, civic associations and unions, and other guests. Wreaths are laid on graves in the memorial cemetery. The headstones in the Jewish part of the cemetery are inscribed with numbers only, no names, and have little stones laid atop them to show that mourners have visited. Part of the cemetery is Christian – it was not only Jews who died at Terezín.

You will attend the Commemoration on Sunday morning and at 2:00 p.m. the performance of The Defiant Requiem will take place in Terezín’s former Riding School. A large barn-like stone structure in the center of town that had originally been where soldiers learned to fight on horseback, the Nazis used the building as a warehouse and a place where inmates worked at a number of tasks.

The summer of 2008 marks conductor MURRY SIDLIN’s 30th year of service at the Aspen Music Festival, where he is resident artist/teacher and associate director of conducting. He and Aspen Music Festival music director David Zinman have spent three summers developing and leading Aspen’s American Academy of conducting, a new school within the Aspen Festival for which they serve as the two resident teachers. Mr. Sidlin also marks his thirteenth season as Artistic Director of the Cascade Festival of Music in Bend, Oregon.

Mr. Sidlin has held a number of distinguished music directorships and appears as guest conductor around the world, including recent appearances with the St. Louis Symphony and the major orchestras of San Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Jerusalem, Madrid, I Solisti Veneti, Quebec, Honolulu, Seattle, Monte Carlo, Vancouver, B.C., Victoria B.C., Colorado and Utah, in addition to the Boston Pops, the San Antonio Symphony and Opera, the Houston Symphony and the Lindberg Orchestra of Holland.

During the summer of 2000, Mr. Sidlin received rave reviews when he conducted the first performance in Eastern Europe of Bernstein’s Mass at the famed Eastern European festival at Vilnius in Lithuania. He returned to the festival in the summer of 2003. Future and recent past-engagements include returns to Maastricht, Holland as well as the San Diego Symphony, where for eight years he conducted the Classical Hits series, their “Light Bulb” series, and served for several seasons as principal conductor of San Diego’s summer season.

In Spring of 2002 with the Oregon Symphony, he presented Defiant Requiem, a concert/drama that illuminates how and why the Verdi Requiem was presented 16 times by the prisoners of the Terezín Concentration Camp 1943-44. Oregon Public Television’s production of this concert was broadcast on the national PBS network over 220 stations and in the spring of 2006, he led this moving program in Terezín. He returns to Terezín for a performance of this with the Berkshire Choral Festival in May 2009.

Mr. Sidlin began his career as assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony under Sergiu Comissiona and was appointed by Antal Dorati as resident conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra for four seasons. He served as Music Director of the New Haven Symphony for 12 seasons, and for eight of those seasons was also Music Director of the Long Beach Symphony in California. He has also served as music director of the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Connecticut Ballet, and was principal guest conductor of the Gavleborg Orkester of Sweden. He has studied with legendary pedagogues Leon Barzin and Sergiu Celibidache.