The Passenger

Synopsis

An encounter between two women – one a former Auschwitz guard, the other a former prisoner, The Passanger plunges them both back into the horrors of the Holocaust, pitting perpetrator against victim in a moral battle between guilt and denial, retribution and absolution.

Based upon a semi-autobiographical novel by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz, Polish composer [Mieczysław Weinberg]’s 1968 opera The Passenger was effectively banned in the USSR and only finally received its triumphant stage premiere at last year’s Bregenz Festival, 14 years after Weinberg’s death.

Hailed as ‘a work that demands and deserves to be seen’ (Opera), this 20th century masterpiece, by a composer whose music has been characterised as ‘Shostakovich with a Jewish accent’, The Passenger now comes to ENO in David Pountney’s shatteringly intense staging, conducted by Richard Armstrong.

Our Review:

19 September 2011

It’s a brave composer that chooses to set his first opera in a Nazi concentration camp. Apart from the difficulty of delivering dramatic impetus while ensuring taste and sensitivity, such a venture also risks producing something that might be too bleak to have any popular appeal. However, Mieczysław Weinberg’s 1968 opera, The Passenger, manages to avoid these pitfalls while providing a stimulating theatrical experience.

Some of the credit for this must go to Alexander Medvedev, who produced the well structured libretto, not to mention Auschwitz survivor, Zofia Posmysz, who wrote the novel on which the opera is based. However, much of the credit is due to the sensitive scoring of Weinberg himself, a Polish composer who fled the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and spent most of his adult life in Moscow, where he became a colleague and friend of Shostakovich.

Weinberg was a prolific composer, producing no less than seven operas, 26 symphonies and mu...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 16 October 2011:

This was a somewhat harrowing experience, but an opera I’m very glad I did experience. It moves between an ocean liner in the 60’s, whose passengers include a former Auschwitz guard and one of her victims, and Auschwitz itself back in the 40’s. It’s a very dramatic but very accessible score and David Pountney’s production is masterly, partly thanks to Johan Engels extraordinary design, with the ship’s deck towering over the rail tracks and desolation of the concentration camp. Richard Armstrong’s conducting was also masterly and the orchestra sounded sensational. Amongst a fine ensemble, Giselle Allen as Marta and Michelle Breedt as Liese were wonderful....

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