1933 - The Turning Point: Art, Oppression & Resistance

Chicago Opera Theater and the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center partner for an illuminating evening that explores how 1933 marked a profound rupture in the history of both Europe and the arts. That year, Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany ushered in the Nazi dictatorship, unleashing a systematic campaign of antisemitism, censorship, and cultural control. Within months, civil liberties were suspended, Jewish artists were expelled from their professions, and a new ideology of “racially pure” art replaced the creative pluralism of the Weimar Republic.

Amid this upheaval, composer Kurt Weill and playwright Georg Kaiser premiered Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake)—a daring allegory about poverty, injustice, and redemption. The work was banned within weeks of its debut, its creators forced into exile. Yet its music and message endure as a testament to the power of art to bear witness and to resist tyranny.

1933: The Turning Point — Art, Oppression, and Resistance combines live musical excerpts from Der Silbersee with historical context and dialogue, shedding light on how this masterpiece reflects the political and moral crises of its time. Together, COT and the Illinois Holocaust Museum invite audiences to reflect on how the lessons of 1933—when democracy collapsed, truth was suppressed, and art was silenced—remain urgently relevant today.

This event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is highly recommended due to limited seating capacity.