The Secret Poetess of Terezin is based on JUNO Award-winning singer and composer Lenka Lichtenberg’s award-winning Thieves of Dreams album (which draws on recently discovered poems that her grandmother wrote while imprisoned in Theresienstadt, a WWII concentration camp in Czechoslovakia). The intensely personal, yet ultimately universal narrative is a story of passion, of love received, embraced, rejected, and lost; of dreams and relationships evolving and dissolving under the pressure of monumental historical events. The songs (sung in both English and Czech), along with spoken word pieces, projections of archival images, and specially curated video clips, offer an immersive and intimate performing arts experience that audiences have been strongly connecting with.

Some of the instruments featured in this concert are part of the Violins of Hope exhibition, which runs at Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, from from May 3 to June 16, 2024. Violins of Hope is an exhibition and collection of historic string instruments from before and during the Holocaust. The restored instruments once belonged to victims and survivors of the Holocaust and now share the story that wherever there is music, there is hope.