Major German theaters have launched a new website to commemorate ensemble members who were persecuted during the Nazi era. The portal, www.verstummte-stimmen.de, serves as a research and educational platform as well as a permanently and globally accessible digital memorial, the city of Bayreuth, the project's sponsor, announced on Monday.

Presentation of the project
"Silenced Voices"

The project brings together nearly 300 biographies of artists and stage professionals who were forced out of German opera houses between 1933 and 1945, persecuted, and often murdered because they were Jewish or opposed the Nazi regime. "Silenced Voices" is a collaboration between the Hamburg State Opera, the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, the Stuttgart State Opera, the Dresden Semperoper, and the Dresden State Theatre.

The biographies of artists such as the conductors Otto Klemperer and Erich Kleiber, the violinist and composer Hugo Löwenthal, the cellist Margarethe Düsedau and the actress Lilli Palmer are narrated on the website by current ensemble members of the participating houses, including the Semperoper director Nora Schmid and the general music director of the Berlin State Opera, Christian Thielemann.

The online project is based on the exhibition "Silenced Voices: The Expulsion of Jews from the Opera 1933–1945," which was shown in six German cities between 2006 and 2012. Since 2012, the exhibition has been on display as a large-scale open-air installation on the Green Hill of the Bayreuth Festival.

On the opening day of the Bayreuth Festival next Sunday (July 26), a public memorial ceremony will take place in the open-air installation, followed by a memorial concert in the Festspielhaus, at which the publicist and philosopher Michel Friedman will give a speech.

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