The Passenger tells the tale of a German couple, Liza and Walter, going by ship from Europe to Brazil in the fifties, where Walter will become a counselor of the Ambassador. The peaceful trip is chillingly disturbed when Marta, a Polish passenger, reminds Liza of a prisoner she used to oversee as a Nazi guard in Auschwitz. The opera contrasts the luxury of life on a ship with the cruel starkness of a concentration camp in Johan Engels' carefully staged scenic design.
The Passenger is a co-production of the Lincoln Center Festival and of Park Avenue Armory in collaboration with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Its American premiere was at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas under Patrick Summers's baton, directed by David Pountney.
Opera "The Passenger" by Mieczysław Weinberg photo. Karl Forster / Bregenzer Festspiele
The New York Times points out that no ready-made answers are offered, and the action remains nebulous until the end. Even Marta, according to the daily, remains an uncertain character, perhaps real or perhaps the spectral projection of a past of which Liza cannot rid herself.
Patrick Summers describes The Passenger as a unique historical, theatrical and moral creation. In his opinion, the opera is not Weinberg's artistic interpretation of a historical tragedy, but rather a way to document the Holocaust according to the perception of those who experienced it. The conductor said in an interview:
It's one of the few pieces of Holocaust Art that was A) written by people who were there, and B) doesn't in any way try to make sense of such a human catastrophe," he said. "It is an opera that does exactly what art is supposed to do, which is to ask us questions. It does not, as a piece of art, answer any of those questions.
Michelle Breedt is Liza (mezzosoprano),Joseph Kaiser isWalter (tenor), Melody Moore sings Marta(soprano) and Morgan Smith plays Tadeusz (baritone).
Opera "The Passenger" by Mieczysław Weinberg photo. Karl Forster / Bregenzer Festspiele
According to Alex Ross of the New Yorker, the opera conveys the appropriate force and dramatic power to accurately reflect the darkest event of the 20th century:
Weinberg’s most substantial achievement is to hint at the inhumane energies that lurk behind all the shining surfaces of modern life. The most chilling music in the score is the light jazz that plays on board the ship; it is the sound of indifference.
Virtually all aspects of the production were lauded by critics. The New York Times writes:
The cast is flawless.
And later on:
The tension between past and present is not just embedded in the music and libretto but built right into the spatial concept of the imposing production by the director David Pountney, who also prepared the English translation of the libretto used here. (...) A two-tiered set, designed by Johan Engels, shows the airy upper deck of the ocean liner, where passengers mingle, wearing elegant suits and dresses of creamy whites. But just below, we see the hellish concentration camp, where stacked flat beds and freight bins roll in and out on railroad tracks.
Of Weinberg's music, George Grella writes for the New York Classical Review:
Just as one begins to think that Weinberg is a superior craftsman but without first-rate brilliance, the composer produces some breathtaking melodic and structural invention, especially in a gorgeous duet for Marta and her fellow prisoner Katya (soprano Kelly Kaduce, singing lyrically), a partisan acquainted with Tadeusz.
Of the venue and the staging, Justin Davidson says in Vulture that:
The Park Avenue Armory is the perfectly imperfect setting for this Houston Grand Opera production (which has its second and final performance tonight). In that vast vault, the singers have to be miked. (...) But Pountney compensates for acoustical drawbacks with a multi-story set so vivid you can practically smell the machine oil and coal smoke.
Zofia Posmysz, born in Kraków in 1923, is an author, screenwriter and writer for radio and televised theatre performances, reporter and broadcast radio editor. She spent three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. The experience inspired, fourteen years later, her first radio broadcast, Passenger from Cabin 45.
Mieczysław Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw. From 1939 onwards, he lived in the USSR, where he died in 1996, in Moscow. He left behind 26 symphonies, 7 concertos, 17 string quartets, 19 sonatas, at least 150 songs, 7 operas and 2 ballets. He also created 65 film and animation scores, musical scores for theatre and radio shows. Many of these were published only after his death and today they appear in both Russian and Polish concert programmes and in orchestras all over the world.
Sources: PAP, NYT, New Yorker, Vulture, New York Classical Review edited by LB, 14/07/2014