On the day of the evocation of the victims

On the occasion of the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, and in the context of the production of a documentary about Father Joaquim Carreira involving 7MARGENS, the Embassy of Italy in Portugal and the Italian Institute of Culture promote a concert by the Italian ensemble Artemisia String Trio, which includes pieces by Antonio Vivaldi, Anton Giulio Priolo, Nicola Piovani (Life is Beautiful), John Williams (Schindler’s List) or Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

The concert, with free entrytakes place in this Friday, 27th, from 6 pm, at the Music Museum (located at the Alto dos Moinhos Metro station), in Lisbon, celebrating the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp and the memory of the victims.

In the show’s program, Trio Artemisia also proposes pieces by Reiner Kuttenberger and Herman Yablokoff. All pieces are elaborated and orchestrated by composer Anton Giulio Priolo for Trio Artemisia. Herman Yablokoff (1903, Belarus-1981, United States) was, in addition to a composer and musician, also one of the most important actors of the Yiddish theater. And Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco also emigrated to the United States because of the Italian racial laws at the time of the Second World War, becoming, in his adopted country, a famous composer of soundtracks and professor of music at the Los Angeles Conservatory; among his most famous students was John Williams, the author of the soundtrack to Schindler’s Listamong many other works.

Domenica Pugliese (viola), Daniela Petracchi (cello) and Elisa Eleonora Papandrea (violin) perform a program dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Shoah.

Composer Anton Giulio Priolo is the son of Luigi Priolo, the last living refugee who was welcomed by Father Carreira as a refugee at the Portuguese Pontifical College, in 1943-44, during the Nazi occupation of Rome. His wife, Elisa Eleonora Papandrea (violin) is one of the members of Trio Artemisia, a project born in 2020, which also includes Domenica Pugliese (viola) and Daniela Petracchi (cello). Gathered by their shared passion for chamber music, the three performers already have a long and prestigious career in chamber music and orchestral performance, whether in important festivals and musical seasons in Italy and abroad or in concerts – in one of the last ones, they played with flutist Luisa Sello at the Embassy of Italy in Sofia (Bulgaria). In addition, they have already recorded videos with music by Brahms and Mozart for different Italian television channels.

Luigi, the last survivor of the College

Luigi Priolo, the last survivor of the refugees welcomed by Father Joaquim Carreira at the Portuguese Pontifical College in Rome in 1943-44, during the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital; photographed at his home, with his wife, Marisa, on November 3, 2022, in an interview for the documentary about Father Carreira. Photo © António Marujo/7Margens

The family connection of Anton Giulio Priolo and Elisa Eleonora Papandrea to the story of Father Joaquim Carreira was the immediate pretext for the coming of Trio Artemisia and the composer to Lisbon. Journalists António Marujo (7MARGENS) and Joaquim Franco (TVI) are currently making a documentary about the story of the Portuguese priest who, in Rome, will be saved around two hundred people during the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital: around fifty Pontifical College, residence of Portuguese priests who go to study in Rome; and, according to available data, more than a hundred women and children that he took to women’s religious houses in the Italian capital. Father Carreira’s attitudes earned him posthumously the attribution, in 2015, of the title of Righteous Among the Nations, by Yad Vashem, the Shoah memorial in Jerusalem.

The documentary that is in preparation will include testimonials from the director of the Historical Archive of the Hebrew Community in Rome, Silvia Haia Antonucci, from the head of the Historical Archive of the Center for Contemporary Hebrew Documentation in Milan, Laura Brazzo, from the historian Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Santo Egídio, and Luigi Priolo himself, who returned for the first time to the interior of the former college building. The documentary will be shown on TVI and will also be available on 7MARGENS and other digital platforms.

The Associação Hagadá – Tikvá Museu Judaico de Lisboa is associated with the concert, which will be attended by the ambassador of Italy, Carlo Formosa, the director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Lisbon and Esther Mucznik, president of Hagadá.