The Verdi Verdict, written by conductor Murry Sidlin, dramatizes a powerful true story from the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. In autumn 1943, 150 prisoners rehearsed Verdi's Requiem—having just one piano-vocal score—and learned it by ear under prisoner-musician Rafael Schächter's direction. This two-scene reading portrays the moral and spiritual conflict that erupted when the Council of Jewish Elders challenged the Requiem's Catholic text as inappropriate for camp performance, questioning music's role in a place of suffering.