Through Challenge Detroit, fellows attended a performance at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra of Guiseppi Verdi’s Requiem at the beginning of May. Challenge Detroit partners with Detroit Passport to the Arts to provide fellows with the opportunity to attend cultural events around the city and previously we have attended the Holiday Brass concert, the play Firepower at the Detroit Repertory Theater, and an Oscar nominated short films event.

I didn’t know much going into the show, other than Guiseppi Verdi’s fame as an Italian composer and a brief knowledge of the opera from a high-school chorus concert where sang a very basic version of one of the movements, but I can honestly say I was blown away. A few years ago, I visited the concentration camp Dachau, outside of Munich, with my best friend whose grandfather was a prisoner of the camp but survived. It was an incredibly emotional experience, and the performance brought me back to that day.

Jewish prisoners at the Terezin concentration led by Rafael (Raffi) Schächter learned and performed the Requiem. Schächter was Romanian born but trained at the Prague Conservatory in composition and conducting. He established his own ensemble before he was transported to Terezin. Schächter assembled a choir of over 200 members at its peak and the Requiem was the second opera performed. It gave prisoners hope and joy, and made them forget the atrocities of the camp for a short period of time. Schächter used the words of the song to “sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them”. At the camp, the opera was performed over 15 times.

The performance of the Defiant Requiem at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra alternated between Verdi’s music and video of the survivors in the chorus at Terezin who told the audience about learning and performing and what it meant to them. The conductor and others also read brief passages and quotes from Schächter in between movements. This provided the necessary context to understand why this opera is so special and defiant. It was truly an amazing performance that I would not have experienced if not for Challenge Detroit!

View of the orchestra and choir