Project “Tolerance-2010”

On 5 May Shmuel Barzilai, the chief cantor of the Vienna Jewish Community, and pianist Michael Segelman gave the concert “Jewish Bel Canto” at the Centre for Tolerance of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

Shmuel Barzilai was born to a family of renowned cantors in Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Institute of Music and Cantoral Singing in Tel Aviv. Later, he also studied under the world famous cantors Moshe Stern, Naftal Herstik, Shmuel Taube and others. In 1992, Barzilai became the chief cantor of the Vienna Jewish Community. He performs with various symphony orchestras in Europe, the US and Israel. His repertoire includes folk and liturgical music, Hassidic and Klezmer music, Israeli and classical songs as well as opera arias. At the concert “Jewish Bel Canto” he sang popular Hebrew and Yiddish songs which he enlivened by telling funny stories.

Markas Zingeris, the director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, addressed the listeners. He spoke about a rare musical genre – cantoral singing – whose traditions are handed down from generation to generation, thus ties with the past have no be lost. Helmut Bernhard Koller, the Austrian ambassador to Lithuania, also spoke. He greeted the members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community gathered at the centre and said that he was pleased to introduce cantor Shmuel Barzilai as the Austrian representative of the unique musical genre in the project “Tolerance-2010”. 

Present also were Irish Ambassador Donal Denham, Czech Ambassador Radek Pech, Italian Ambassador Renato Maria Ricci, Bulgarian Ambassador Ivan Dantchev, Spanish Ambassador Jose Luis Solano Gadea, the director of the Italian Culture Centre, Dr. Stefania Del Bravo, the Polish Culture Centre project coordinator, Barbara Orszewska and other honoured guests.