The Passenger (Opera)
| Opera dates | |
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| Title: | The passenger |
| Original title: | Пассажирка (Passashirka) |
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Houston Grand Opera 2014 |
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| Shape: | Opera in two acts |
| Original language: | Polish, German, English and Hebrew |
| Music: | Mieczysław vineyard |
| Libretto : | Alexander Medvedev |
| Literary source: | Zofia Posmysz : Pasażerka |
| Premiere: | 2006 (concert), July 21, 2010 (scenic) |
| Place of premiere: | Moscow and Bregenz Festival |
| Playing time: | approx. 2 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | A ship to South America around 1960; Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi era |
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The Passenger (Russian: Пассажирка, Passaschirka ) is an opera in two acts (op. 97) by Mieczysław Weinberg . It is considered his main work. Although the opera was completed in 1968, a concert premiere did not take place until 2006 in Moscow and a staged world premiere during the Bregenz Festival on July 21, 2010. The libretto by Alexander Medvedev is based on the autobiographical novel Pasażerka by Zofia Posmysz .
content
The former concentration camp guard Lisa believes she recognizes the former female prisoner Martha (in another passenger) on the ship 15 years after the end of the war. The scenes take place alternately on the ship and in Auschwitz, the final scene at the Marthas home river.
first act
First picture. On the ship
Anna Lisa Kretschmar (nee Franz) is with her husband, a prospective ambassador, on the ship on the way to his future destination in South America.
Lisa, a former concentration camp guard, thinks she recognizes the former prisoner Martha on board. The superintendent appears to her in a retrospect “Don't be so hesitant”. She confesses to her husband that she belonged to the SS at the time . “It's true, I was in Auschwitz , but that doesn't make me a criminal. I've never hit anyone. "
Your husband reacts with career fears and feelings of betrayal. When Anna asks his forgiveness, he comforts her: “Everyone has the right to forget the war”.
At the end of the scene, to their relief, both learn from the steward that the stranger is an English citizen.
Her husband sums up: “We Germans like to torment ourselves with doubts, with horror fantasies and foggy secrets. We are sentimental. But this property makes us purer. "
Second picture. Roll call in Auschwitz
In Auschwitz, SS leaders complained about the boredom in the camp and the difficulty they had in clearing up the corpses. They console themselves with the certainty of fulfilling the will of the Führer: “We are cleaning the earth for the great, the German Reich. Here in Auschwitz we are making history ”.
The guard Lisa decides to make Martha her confidante in order to make it easier for herself to manage her prisoner squad, the squad.
Third picture. Barrack
The choir of female prisoners welcomes a newcomer (Yvette from Dijon). Others are from Warsaw, Kiev, Zagreb, Prague, Minsk, Paris.
A Greek woman wants to die. Martha can't comfort her.
A mother asks God for the health of her children and for the punishment of her tormentors.
A prisoner asks whether the Germans also have a god and whether he is strict like the kapo .
A woman is brutally beaten.
When a piece of paper is found on her, Lisa forces Martha to read it out in translation. Martha is cheating on her, instead of the conspiratorial cashier she declaims a love letter.
On the ship
In this short scene before the break, Lisa complains to her husband about this fraud, which she later found out: “You all hated us, Walter! I ... all of us who were on duty in the camp couldn't come to terms with it ... ”- Walter is silent.
Second act
Fourth picture. Magazine in Auschwitz
Lisa manages the violins that were taken from the prisoners. A valuable violin is selected so that an inmate plays the concentration camp commandant's favorite waltz: “He should play it before it vanishes into thin air. So he is still useful for something. "
The musician who is supposed to pick up the instrument turns out to be Martha's fiancé Tadeusz, from whom she was separated two years ago after her imprisonment.
When they are surprised by Lisa, she shows understanding and enables them to have a rendezvous.
The woman with whom the cash register was found joins them; it turns out that this was given to her by Tadeusz.
Fifth picture. Workshop
In the workshop of the concentration camp, Tadeusz received another message: “Your report was received in Krakow on time. We thank you for the valuable information. Know: Kiev is liberated! Hold on, friends, and be careful! ”.
Tadeusz is busy creating a camp Madonna in Martha's image.
When Lisa offers to enable him to meet Martha again, Martha refuses, as he does not want Martha to be at risk and does not want to be in Lisa's debt.
On the ship
Years later, again in a short scene, Lisa told her husband about this rejection: “He didn't want any favors from me, Walter! […] Although he knew that he was sentenced to death, he refused. They were all blind with hatred… ”.
Sixth picture. Barrack
Martha celebrates her twentieth birthday in the concentration camp.
Martha begins a great aria in which she deals with the ubiquity of death in the camp: "[...] I only want to look death in the eye when it has taken a seat next to me!"
When Lisa shows up in the barracks, she tells Martha that Tadeusz had refused to meet her. Martha and the inmates consider this decision to be the right one: "Ms. concentration camp guard, Tadeusz is right."
With a language course, the prisoners begin to express hope about the time after the war. Katja sings about the winter sun.
Lisa tells Martha that she has reported her forbidden contact and opens her sentence: "You go to the block - you know what I mean ...". Before that, however, she would have to hear Tadeusz in the concert. "This will be my last gift to you."
The scene closes with a cry for help to God and ends with the doubt “if you exist”.
Seventh picture. ship
Lisa learns that the unknown passenger, in whom she thinks she recognizes Martha, is Polish.
Lisa justifies her past: “Yes, I was in Auschwitz, and that's why I'm certainly not a criminal yet. I was an honest German. I am proud because I have done my duty. "
Her husband confirms: “It was just war. That's a long time ago. Everyone has the right to forget the war ... time washed everything away ... "
Eighth picture. Concert in Auschwitz
In the concentration camp, Tadeusz is asked to play the waltz and his death sentence is revealed to him: “[...] Play like before the Lord God. You will meet with him soon. "
Instead of the waltz, however, Tadeusz plays Bach's Chaconne (from the Partita in D minor ).
The SS guards smash his violin and lead him away while they brutally beat him up.
On the ship
Lisa has overcome her fear and is attending a dance event. The passenger steps up and hands the band a piece of paper with her music request. The band plays the concentration camp commandant's favorite waltz.
Epilogue. The aged Martha by the river
Martha is sitting by her home river after decades, she asks about her friends who have been killed: "If one day your [...] voices have faded, we shall perish."
She recalls that she and her fellow inmates swore never to forgive their tormentors.
layout
Weinberg uses elements of twelve-tone music as well as quotes from folk music. There are parallels to Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth von Mtsensk and Berg's Wozzeck as well as Britten's music . Weinberg uses Polish, German, English and Hebrew in opera. This multinational use of language can also be found in other contemporary works, e.g. B. in the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten or in the Dies irae by Krzysztof Penderecki .
Instrumentation
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwinds : three flutes , three oboes , three clarinets , alto saxophone , three bassoons
- Brass : six horns , four trumpets , three trombones , baritone horn , tuba
- Timpani , drums (three players)
- Celesta , piano
- guitar
- Strings
- Stage music : accordion , guitar, piano, drums, double bass
Work history
When reading the novel through the two storylines, Dmitri Shostakovich recognized the suitability of the subject for an opera. He passed it on to Medvedev, who in turn drew the attention of Weinberg to the book. Medvedev visited Auschwitz with the author, who also agreed to offer more space in the operatic version of the novel of the prisoners Martha (or the guard Lisa?).
Despite Shostakovich's intense advocacy and although the opera was rehearsed at the Bolshoi Theater , it was not performed until the 21st century, as there was fear in the Soviet Union of associations between a concentration camp and the Gulag . The work was accused of "abstract humanism".
After a concert premiere in Moscow in 2006, the staged premiere took place on July 21, 2010 as part of the Bregenz Festival . There the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra were under the musical direction of Teodor Currentzis . It was directed by David Pountney . Elena Kelessidi (Martha), Artur Ruciński (Tadeusz), Svetlana Doneva (Katja), Angelica Voje (Krzystina), Elżbieta Wróblewska (Vlasta), Agnieszka Rehlis (Hannah), Talia Or (Ivette), Helen Field (An Old Prisoner) sang ), Liuba Sokolova (Bronka), Roberto Saccà (Walter), Michelle Breedt (Lisa), Tobias Hächler (1st SS man), Wilfried Staber (2nd SS man) and David Danholt (3rd SS man). Zofia Posmysz , the 86-year-old Auschwitz survivor at the performance, took part in the performance in Bregenz in 2010 and answered questions from visitors. The Bregenz production has been taken over by other opera houses several times: in 2010 by Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, in 2011 by the English National Opera in London, in 2014 by the Houston Grand Opera , which showed this production in Houston and at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, in 2015 by the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Detroit Opera House as well as the Florida Grand Opera in Miami in 2016.
The German premiere took place on May 18, 2013 at the Karlsruhe State Theater . The production was done by Holger Müller-Brandes , the equipment by Philipp Fürhofer , and the musical director by Christoph Gedschold. Since then, the opera has been staged several times on European stages: In March 2015, the Frankfurt Opera brought out a production directed by Anselm Weber and conducted by Leo Hussain and Christoph Gedschold. In September 2016 the opera was performed in Yekaterinburg (director: Thaddeus Strassberger , conductor: Oliver von Dohnányi ) and in 2017 it was shown in a guest performance at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow; in January 2017 a production followed at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen (director: Gabriele Rech , conductor: Valtteri Rauhalammi) and in the same month at the Novaya Opera in Moscow (director: Sergey Shirikov, conductor: Jan Latham-Koenig ). In 2019 Theater & Philharmonie Thuringia Altenburg-Gera brought out a new production (director: Kay Kuntze , conductor: Laurent Wagner ).
Reviews
After a few private piano lectures, Weinberg's close friend Shostakovich wrote: “[…] But it has become a real opera, a success that all of Weinberg's earlier works paved the way for. And apart from his musical merits, this is a work that we urgently need today. "
Markus Thiel from Münchner Merkur takes up the frequent comparison of friends Shostakovich and Weinberg: where the former “copes with painfully wild expressionism”, Weinberg uses stylistic devices “of internalization, of stylization, even of the fragmentary. No glaring naturalism, no pathetic muscle games (except for the great ending) characterize this music… ”.
E. Tholl from the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes the effect of the scene in which Thadeusz comes to an end as follows: “The effect of this scene cannot be put into words. Weinberg does not set any text to music either, he leaves the music alone. The strings in the orchestra record the chaconne, the sound of this wonderful music fills the whole room. One of the many moments in this opera that are simply unbelievable ”.
Others
Shortly before Weinberg's death, his librettist Medvedev promised that the opera would be premiered "twice" as well, that is, listen once for himself and once for the composer. Tragically, Medvedev died a few days before he had the opportunity to attend a performance at the Bregenz Festival.
Recordings
The performance of the opera at the Bregenz Festival 2010 was recorded in coproduction by UNITEL and ORF (in cooperation with the Bregenz Festival and CLASSICA) and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 30, 2010 on NEOS, and again on March 30, 2010. October 2015 at Arthaus Musik. The opera's playing time is around 160 minutes. Additional material is a documentation In der Fremde and a 164-page booklet with a synopsis, a complete libretto, artist biographies and a text by Dmitri Shostakovich about the opera.
literature
- David Fanning: Mieczysław Weinberg. In search of freedom . Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-936000-90-0 (biography with catalog raisonné).
Web links
- Info text and libretto from the Karlsruhe State Theater , accessed on November 25, 2015.
- Short video from the Frankfurt Opera , accessed on March 16, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ^ David Fanning: Mieczysław Weinberg. In search of freedom . Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-936000-90-0 .
- ^ All quotations after the surtitling of the premiere during the Bregenz Festival
- ^ A b David Fanning: Mieczysław Weinberg. A. d. S. n. Freedom . P. 134.
- ^ The passenger at Peermusic Classical, accessed on May 29, 2018.
- ↑ A brilliant opera discovery in Bregenz. Deutschlandradio Kultur from August 7, 2010, accessed on April 16, 2011
- ^ Roland H. Dippel: Cruel memories. In: Concerti , March 10, 2019, accessed on March 13, 2019.
- ↑ Merkur Online of July 22, 2010, accessed on October 27, 2010
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 23, 2010, accessed on July 27, 2010
- ^ David Fanning: Mieczysław Weinberg. A. d. S. n. Freedom . P. 131.
- ↑ "Passenger" -Librettist Alexander Medvedev died , klassikinfo.de, accessed on 19 March 2018