‘Requiem’

A Song Of Hope And Remembrance

By Nancy K. Crevier

Dolores Lussier has spent several weeks digesting her experience in Prague, Czech Republic. “It mellowed me for a while, but I would not have given up this experience for anything,” said Ms Lussier.

Ms Lussier appeared with the Berkshire Choral Festival group from Sheffield, Mass., performing Verdi’s Requiem at the annual ceremonies in Terezin, outside of Prague, commemorating the Jewish people who died in concentration camps during World War II.

Although Ms Lussier has sung with the St Rose Senior Choir for 35 years, performed in the St Rose Cabaret, and for many years was a member of Newtown Choral Society and Connecticut Choral Society, she does not consider herself to be of the professional level normally invited to sing with the Berkshire Choral Society. At the urging of her cousin Elaine Saulnia, though, a member of the singing group, Ms Lussier sent in her résumé to sing with the choral organization in Prague.

“I was very pleased to be accepted,” said Ms Lussier, who sings first soprano. “I think that my experiences with the Connecticut Choral Society were very helpful. They were good learning experiences and with them I had sung many major works,” she said.

She did not know what to expect of Prague, having never been to the Czech Republic, but found Prague to be a beautiful city of outstanding architecture. The five- to six-hour rehearsals each day took place in various venues throughout the city, allowing her to see the different districts, but also left most of the singers too exhausted to explore much in the evenings that they had free.

Because the Movenpick Hotel where the choral members stayed in an older section of the city was just around the corner from the Mozart museum, she did visit the permanent exhibition honoring the famous musician who considered Prague his “home away from home.” As a group, they visited the Old Jewish Cemetery, so crowded that bodies are buried 12 deep, and several of the synagogues in the city, as well as some of the shopping districts in other parts of the town, allowing her a deeper understanding of the country and its history.

“Just reading about history you don’t have that more personal experience,” said Ms Lussier. “Being in a place where very cruel things happened, going to the synagogues and seeing the sacredness of what they went through, was very emotional.”

The village of Terezin was a peaceful town of only 7,000 citizens before Nazi occupation. By the time the war ended, the village was a walled in “holding tank,” explained Ms Lussier, for more than 100,000 people in a concentration camp, nearly all of Jewish descent.

The population of Terezin Concentration Camp (also known as Theresienstadt) was made up mainly of artists and musicians, she was told. One prisoner had in his possession a single vocal score for Verdi’s Requiem.

“He taught it to a group of the prisoners there, and even though the Nazi’s made fun of them for ‘singing their own deaths,’ it kept their hopes up, when there was no reason for hope,” Ms Lussier said.

According to information at berkshirechoral.org, prisoner and conductor Raphael Schaechter and the doomed choral group performed the Requiem 16 times during 1943 and 1944, while imprisoned at Terezin.

Under the direction of rehearsal director Frank Nemhauser and conductor Murry Sidlin, the choral group joined with a 150-piece orchestra, as well as narrators, to present a multimedia presentation of the Verdi work that included a film of the Terezin choral survivors.

“[Murry Sidlin’s] passion is to bring this story of the camp choir to as many people as possible by performing Verdi’s Requiem, wherever he can, so that people don’t forget,” Ms Lussier said.

The concert took place in a vast factory within the former Terezin Concentration Camp. The dim, gray interior space, with windows still looking out on barbed wire fencing and the barren grounds, created an atmosphere sadly appropriate to the performance, she said.

“It was very painful. A lot of death happened there,” said Ms Lussier.

What the 200-voice Berkshire Choral Festival brought to Terezin, though, was the memory of the hope prisoners in Terezin had held fast to, through music.

The concert was attended by 300 dignitaries and officials from Prague and surrounding towns, as well as residents of Terezin, she said. One audience member in particular, though, stood out.

“I met one of the concentration camp survivors who had been a member of that concentration camp chorus. Edgar Masa was a gentleman in his late eighties. He follows people who give concerts of the Requiem and makes a point of reaching out to the choral members, so that people will know that this really happened,” she recalled. What he told her, referring to himself, has stayed with her: “What you see here is just a shell.”

Even though she found performing in the concentration camp to be an emotional struggle, she saw that it was even more of a struggle for others in the performing group who had family who had died in the Holocaust and who understood the Jewish culture.

“I learned so much about the strength of the Jewish families, and I better understand now why they are so strong. They have all of this history and have survived, and are still doing so today,” she said.

Performing with the Berkshire Choral Festival, said Ms Lussier, was an exhilarating experience that gave her confidence in her knowledge of music and singing.

“We had professionals working with each section of the choir for rehearsals, something I have not had the opportunity to take part in before. Musicwise, it was just outstanding,” she said. “It is really the most glorious piece of music.”

Always appreciative of the importance of life prior to her trip to Terezin, since her return Ms Lussier finds she does not take anything for granted anymore.

“I look at people differently, I’m less judgmental, and I feel like I have more of an understanding of the struggles others go through,” said Ms Lussier.

She has sown the seeds of her experience in her own backyard this summer. They are not melodies, but flowers that sing to her of hope that can grow in a spiritual drought.

“When I came home,” she said, “I planted a garden. There was nothing at that concentration camp. I had to plant life.”