Weinberg - The Passenger (2010) BDRip

Is an opera dealing with Auschwitz automatically worthy of acclaim simply through its dealing with a subject that can't help but be powerful and emotive? Or are some subjects are just so taboo that they shouldn't be turned into art, since any attempts to do so will almost certainly diminish them? Written in 1967-8, it's taken over 40 years for Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger to receive its World Premiere at the Bregenzer Festspiele in 2010, and on the basis of this remarkable production, it seems that opera is the perfect and perhaps the only art-form really capable of dealing with the complex questions that the subject gives rise to.

Dealing with events that took place in Auschwitz from the perspective of looking back on what happened, those questions relate here to the issues of guilt and conscience, specifically over the involvement and culpability of ordinary German people in the atrocities committed during the war in the Nazi concentration camps. The subject is raised as a German official, Walter, is about to set sail with his wife to take up a diplomatic post in Brazil during the 1960s. His wife, Lisa, becomes upset however when she sees a passenger on the ship, a woman who reminds her of a dark episode in her past that she has never told her husband about. The woman reminds her of Marta, a Polish prisoner at Auschwitz, where Lisa was an SS camp overseer.

Recording live at the Bregenzer Festspiele, July 2010. World premiere recording.

Music: Mieczysław Weinberg
Libretto: Alexander Medvedev, based on the Polish novel (1959) by concentration camp survivor Zofia Posmysz, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Wiener Symphoniker
Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Stage Director: David Pountney
Video Director: Felix Breisach
Cast and Crew: Lisa: Michelle Breedt, Walter: Roberto Saccà, Martha: Elena Kelessidi, Tadeusz: Artur Rucinski, Katja: Svetlana Doneva, Krzystina: Angelica Voje, Vlasta: Elżbieta Wróblewska, Ivette: Talia Or, Hannah: Agnieszka Rehlis, Old Woman: Elen Field, Bronka: Liuba Sokolova