{"id":20500,"date":"2017-05-23T18:03:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T18:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=20500"},"modified":"2017-05-23T18:03:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T18:03:57","slug":"the-defiant-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/the-defiant-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Defiant Requiem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through Challenge Detroit, fellows attended\u00a0a performance at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra of Guiseppi Verdi\u2019s Requiem at the beginning of May. Challenge Detroit partners with Detroit Passport to the Arts<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know much going into the show, other than Guiseppi Verdi\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Jewish prisoners at the Terezin concentration led by Rafael (Raffi) Sch\u00e4chter learned and performed the Requiem. Sch\u00e4chter was Romanian born but trained at the Prague Conservatory in composition and conducting. He established his own ensemble before he was transported to Terezin. Sch\u00e4chter 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. Sch\u00e4chter used the words of the song to \u201csing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them\u201d. At the camp, the opera was performed over 15 times.<\/p>\n

The performance of the Defiant Requiem<\/a> at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra alternated between Verdi\u2019s 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 Sch\u00e4chter 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!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

View of the orchestra and choir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through Challenge Detroit, fellows attended\u00a0a performance at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra of Guiseppi Verdi\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":20506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-playdetroit","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}