Music

Restaging Of "The Passenger"

The Passenger, (1968) is an opera by Mieczysław Weinberg to a libretto by Alexander Medvedev (librettist) originally written in Russian.

The libretto is based on the Polish radio play Passenger from Cabin Number 45 (1959) by concentration camp survivor Zofia Posmysz.  

The opera is set on two levels: the upper level depicts the deck of an ocean liner after the Second World War where a German couple, Lisa and Walter (a West German diplomat on his way with his new wife to a new diplomatic posting), are sailing to Brazil. The wife, Lisa, thinks she recognizes a Polish woman on board, Marta, as a former inmate of Auschwitz where she, unknown to her husband, was a camp guard. The second lower level develops below the liner deck, depicting the concentration camp. The opera is an interplay between the two levels.

Mieczysław Weinberg (December 8, 1919 – February 26, 1996) was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin. From 1939 he lived in the Soviet Union and Russia and lost most of his family in the Holocaust.

He left a large body of work that included twenty-two symphonies and seventeen string quartets; according to one reviewer he ranked as, "the third great Soviet composer, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich".

Due to the enormous success of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's "The Passenger", Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, will be restaging the opera in 2014! 

Concert dates are: March, 21+29 | April, 4 | May, 13+16

The music material and the rights for the production of "The Passenger" in Greece and Cyprus are available by “THE ARTBASSADOR” on behalf of Peermusic Classical.