Kaddish Oriya and Ghetto Terezin

Debut concert of music by Hannie Ricardo, mother of Oriya who was murdered on October 7th at the Nova Music Festival

Conductor: Talia Ilan | Soloists: Ariel Shapira – soprano, Shahaf Regev – baritone

October 7, The Opera House – The Performing Arts Center, Tel Aviv | 6:29 pm

October 15, The Jerusalem Theater | 6:29 pm

After Oriya Ricardo, a young woman full of light and joy, who loved music and loved to dance, was murdered at the Nova Music Festival, her mother Hannie Ricardo realized that the work “Kaddish”, which she had begun composing months before October 7th in memory of composers from Ghetto Theresienstadt who perished in the Holocaust, would be dedicated to her daughter Oriya

Hannie Ricardo is a musician and historian who has been performing the works of composers from Ghetto Theresienstadt for decades. Jewish history is extremely tumultuous – before the WW2 Hannie’s her Great-grandfather, Benjamin Israel Ricardo, was the Rabbi at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, his family was almost decimated at Auschwitz. Hannie interwove Sabbath songs that her grandfather had taught her as a child in the “Kaddish”, thus forming a connecting line between the Holocaust and the massacre of October 7th, a tragedy that chillingly echoed the horrors of the Holocaust

Music was a source of strength for the composers and musicians incarcerated in the ghetto, giving them a reason to go on living and the stamina to survive another day. Hannie believes in the power of music and of cultural life to help one rise from the ashes. Her new work that will premiere on October 7, 2024, “Kaddish Oriya and Ghetto Terezin”, forms a link between past, present, and future. It expresses and faces the pain, in defiance of the growing antisemitism and as a way of battling it

Hannie approached Beit Theresienstadt, an institution committed to perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust with a focus on the story of Ghetto Theresienstadt, suggesting that they jointly produce a project that would commemorate her daughter Oriya, her friends murdered with her at the Nova Music Festival, and the composers from Ghetto Theresienstadt

The first part of the concert will be devoted to works for choir and for soloists, written mostly in the ghetto, while in the second part the Kaddish will be performed, written for soloists, choir, wind instruments, and timpani, in a world premiere

The concert  will be part of the battle against antisemitism and for increasing awareness of the Holocaust and the massacre of October 7th, 2023

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