DIE PASSAGIERIN

The play of the hour about remembrance culture and guilt

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

There is no statute of limitations on murder. Neither does guilt. Lisa, an SS guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, finds herself confronted with the perpetrator role of her youth in old age. On a boat trip, she believes she recognizes Marta in a passenger, a prisoner she perfidiously oppressed in the concentration camp. The past, which she has so meticulously tried to suppress over the years, is forced back into her consciousness. The two-act opera by Mieczysław Weinberg was composed in 1968; Weinberg's parents and sister perished in the Trawniki concentration camp. The libretto was based on the novella by Zofia Posmysz. After being interned in Ausschwitz for two and a half years, Posmysz was later deported to the Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp until its liberation in 1945. She died in August 2022, having witnessed all performances of The Passenger since its concert premiere in 2006.

Tobias Kratzer, born in Landshut in 1980, is staging Die Passagierin, his first opera on the stage of the Nationaltheater. All new productions under his direction in recent years have been created with the same team: Rainer Sellmaier, responsible for stage and costume, and Manuel Braun, responsible for video, in the new production additionally with Jonas Dahl. General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski is responsible for musical direction, Christopher Warmuth for dramaturgy and Michael Bauer for lighting.

Duration: approx. 2 hours 30 minutes (with interval)

Composer Mieczysław Weinberg. Libretto by Alexander W. Medvedev based on the autobiographical novel of the same name Pasażerka by Zofia Posmysz (1923-2022).

Opera in two acts (composition 1968, concert premiere 2006),
Recommended for ages 16 and up. Multilingual. With German and English surtitles. New production.