The audience members took their seats among boxes of medicine, first-aid kits and intravenous tubes. The orchestra was missing four men who are now fighting on the war’s front lines. A handful of guest singers who had fled bombings and bloodshed stood onstage with the choir.
The war in Ukraine has upended the meticulous planning that has gone into the Lviv Philharmonic’s annual summer music festival for four decades. But for musicians and the audience, the show must go on.
Even as the space — a Baroque, pastel-colored chamber — has became a coordination site for humanitarian supplies during the war, it has remained a home to musicians and choirs. This spring, instead of playing upbeat music at the festival’s first performance, the orchestra decided to open with Mozart’s Requiem.
The concert, performed on Friday night, was a tribute to the Ukrainians lost in war. Read more
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