“Passenger”: memory forever. “How did it happen that normal people suddenly reached the point of brutality?” Why was an opera about Auschwitz staged in Yekaterinburg and what does the Ministry of Culture think about it: interview

Characters

• Marta, Polish, prisoner, 19 years old in Auschwitz and 34 years old on the ship (soprano)
• Tadeusz, Martha's lover, prisoner, 25 years old (baritone)
• Katya, Russian partisan, prisoner, 21 (soprano)
• Christina, Polish, prisoner, 28 years old (mezzo-soprano)
• Vlasta, Czech, prisoner, 20 years old (mezzo-soprano)
• Hannah, Jewish, prisoner, 18 years old (contralto)
• Yvette, French, prisoner, 15 years old (soprano)
• Old woman, prisoner (soprano)
• Bronka, old prisoner, 50 years old (contralto)
• Lisa, German, 22 years old in Auschwitz and 37 years old on the ship (mezzo-soprano)
• Walter, Lisa's husband, diplomat, 50 years old (tenor)
• First SS fighter (bass)
• Second SS soldier (bass)
• Third SS fighter (tenor)
• Old Passenger/Steward (Actor)
• Chief Matron (actress)

Synopsis

First act

Early 1960s ocean liner. There is a choir on the stage, which during the course of the performance represents either prisoners, or passengers, or German officers, or ordinary spectators from another time.

Scene 1

Walter, a German diplomat, and his young wife Lisa are sailing to Brazil, where Walter is to join new position. Suddenly Lisa sees a passenger whom she thinks he knew before. But Lisa is sure that this girl has been dead for a long time. In a state of deep shock, Lisa tells her husband for the first time that during the war she was an SS guard at a camp in Auschwitz. During the conversation they quarrel.

Scene 2

Camp at Auschwitz. Here we learn that the “passenger” is Marta, a young Polish prisoner. Warden Lisa Franz singles Marta out from the other prisoners because she thinks she will help her better control the other prisoners.

Scene 3

In the women's section of the barracks there are prisoners from all parts of Europe who are trapped in this cosmopolitan hell. Katya, a Russian partisan from Smolensk, is brought to the barracks after a brutal interrogation. One of the guards finds a note in Polish that could compromise Katya. Lisa orders Martha to read the note, and she coolly passes the note off as a letter to her beloved, Tadeusz, who, it seems to her, is also in Auschwitz.

On the ship, Lisa and Walter are still trying to cope with this serious problem that threatens their relationship.

Second act

Scene 4

Under Lisa's supervision, the prisoners sort through the clothes and other belongings of the executed prisoners. An officer arrives demanding to find the violin. The camp commandant will have a concert, during which one of the prisoners must play the commandant's favorite waltz. Lisa finds a violin, but then the officer decides that the prisoner musician should choose the violin himself. The prisoner turns out to be Tadeusz. Marta and Tadeusz see and recognize each other, but Lisa interferes with them. The warden allows them to talk longer, hoping to play on this in the future.

Scene 5

Lisa insults Tadeusz in the workshop where he is making silver jewelry by order of SS officers. One of the decorations is of Madonna, but Lisa recognizes Martha in the female image. Lisa invites Tadeusz to meet Marta, but he hesitates. He doesn't want to remain indebted to Lisa.

Scene 6

In the women's barracks, prisoners congratulate Martha on her birthday. She sings a song about falling in love with death. Lisa interrupts Marta and tries to provoke her by saying that Tadeusz refused the opportunity to see her. Marta remains calm - she is sure that Tadeusz's decision is correct.

Yvette, a French girl, tries to teach a Russian old lady French words. Katya sings a song about Russia. Suddenly the guards burst in - it’s time for the “selection”. A list with numbers is read out and the prisoners are taken away one by one. Lisa reassures Marta that her time has not yet come - she will make sure that Marta is present at Tadeusz's concert.

Scene 7

On the ship, Walter and Lisa come to the decision that even if the “passenger” is Martha, they still have to come to terms with it. The couple decides to go dancing at the salon. But at the moment when, at the request of the “passenger,” the ship’s orchestra begins to play “the commandant’s favorite waltz,” Lisa is scared to death.

Scene 8

Camp in Auschwitz. Officers and prisoners gather for the concert. Tadeusz is supposed to play a waltz, but he decides to perform a completely different piece - Bach's Chaconne. The scene ends on a high note when the officers smash Tadeusz's violin, drag him off the stage and beat him to death.

Epilogue. Martha remembers the past and passionately wishes that none of the victims be forgotten.

Production history

For this production, a multilingual version of the opera's libretto was created, in which the characters different nationalities they sing in their native languages: Russian, Czech, Yiddish, German, French and English. Languages ​​between actors distributed as follows: Martha - Russian (main), German (in scenes with Lisa); Tadeusz - Russian (main), German (in the scene with Lisa); Katya - Russian; Kristina - Russian; Vlasta - Czech (main), Russian (in ensembles); Khana - Yiddish (main), Russian (in ensembles); Yvette - French (main), Russian (in ensembles); Old woman - German; Lisa - German (main), English (in scenes with the Steward); Walter - German (main), English (in the scene with the Elderly Passenger); First, Second and Third SS - German; Elderly passenger - English; Senior Matron - German; Kapo - German; Steward - English. All choral episodes are performed in Russian.

Awards

• December 17 at the State Kremlin Palace on solemn ceremony At the presentation of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia "Fiddler on the Roof" award, opera director Sergei Shirokov won in the "Theater" category for his production of the opera "The Passenger".
• The opera “The Passenger” was included in the long list of the Golden Mask award, becoming, according to the Expert Council, one of the most notable performances of the season.

Opera reviews

Notes

1. Written "in the blood of the heart." Weinberg's "Passenger" in Warsaw
2. Encyclopedia "Around the World": Weinberg, Mechislav Samuilovich
3. Die Passagierin - Oper von Mieczysław Weinberg (German)
4. The opera by Jewish composer Weinberg “The Passenger” awaited its premiere in Russia
5. Anthony Tommasini "What Lies Beneath: A Haunting Nazi Past"
6. David Fanning: Mieczysław Weinberg. Auf der Suche nach Freiheit. (dt., Biographie mit Werkverzeichnis) Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2010, ISBN 3-936000-90-5
7. Handlung: Die Passagierin von David Poutney // Mieczyslaw Weinberg. In der Fremde. Bregenzer Festspiele GmbH, July 2010
8. The premiere of Moses Weinberg's opera "The Passenger" will take place in Moscow //http://www.jewish.ru/news/culture/2006/12/news994243866.php Archived March 12, 2007.
9. The Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater presents the premiere of an opera by the outstanding Soviet composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg “Passenger” //

“Pass-fat-ka” by Moses (Mechislav) Weinberg is an opera with an incredibly heavy, twisted and, now it’s already obvious, - happy fate. This opera is about Auschwitz, about people who are sta- rying “little-ki-mi win-ti-ka-mi” in a merciless “factory.” the risk of death,” about crime and retribution, which have no expiration date. “Pass-fat” by Weinberg today stands on a par with the main pro-of-the-art of our time, dedicated to this topic: from “The Night Porter” by Liliana Cavani to “Blessings” by John Littell. And in this series, she turned out to be one of the first.

The composer has finished working on the part-ti-tu-roy “Pas-zhi-ki” (lib-ret-to Alexander Medve-de-va based on the story of the Polish writer -tsy Zofia Posmysz) in 1968. The opera was delightful-but-pri-nya-ta kol-le-ga-mi-kom-po-zi-to-ra-mi. Dmitry Shostakovich wrote that “this work is necessary, necessary in our time.” The Bolshoi Theater accepted Passenger for a new production. But suddenly everything collapsed. Theaters are canceling anon-si-ro-van-nye premieres, and a “silence conspiracy” is forming around the opera. For almost forty years, Passenger was in disgrace. And only in 2006, the premiere of the semi-stage version took place in Moscow. In February 2010, a concert performance took place in Novosibirsk. But the real three-fold procession of “Passenger” began after the stage premiere at the festival in Bregenz (July 2010 ). In October of the same year, Weinberg's opera was staged in Warsaw, then after it was performed in London (2011), Madrid (2012), Karlsruhe (2013), Houston (2014; later that year this version visited the festival at Lincoln Center, New York), Chicago and Frankfurt -Maine (both 2015). In Russia in 2014 there was a concert performance of the opera (Perm), and in September 2016 the opera was staged in our country for the first time Yekaterinburg.

The Moscow premiere of the composition took place on January 27, 2017 at the Novaya Opera. This date was not chosen by chance. On January 27, the world celebrates the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust. It was on this day that the Soviet troops liberated the concentration camp Auschwitz. And now we can say with confidence: the Moscow premiere of “Pass-fat-ki” has become an event not only in the culture -tourist, but in the social and international life of the capital.

“Pass-fat” assembled a “star-studded” team of posts and executives. Director-ser-post-nov-schik spec-so-la - TV-video-director-ser Sergey Shirokov, for whom this is the first experience in the opera theater. However, his directorial works on television are known to almost all of our compatriots. For many years now, Sergei Shirokov has been the director of the main entertainment programs on the TV channel “Russia”.

Post-artist - Larisa Lomaki-na, which the Moscow pub- lication knows very well from many outstanding performances in the drama theatre. re, including joint work with director Konstantin Bogomolov.

The costume designer is a well-known Russian fashion designer and clothing designer. Igor Chapurin. In addition to his work in the field of haute couture, he collaborated more than once with drama and ballet theaters. us both in Russia and abroad.

Sergey Shirokov, director:

“Pass-fat-ka” for me is not just an opera among other works about the music of the 20th century theater. “Pass-fat-ka” is a colossal emotional-tsio-nal tension, it’s such an absolutely “direct statement”, in some way In some episodes it is very touching and even sentimental, and in some moments it is insanely cruel. This is almost an ancient drama - very intelligible, despite the complexity of the orchestral structure and the super-expression of vocal speech. “Pass-fat” gives the opportunity to a modern director to work, using everything that is in his disposal. same means of expression and artistic languages, including those far from traditional operatic styles reo-ti-pov. In this sense, “Passenger” is an “open form.” But this is also a very “classy” production, in which the moral message, these core values ​​are given by clear boundaries -nothing for any of our fantasies..."

For the production of the new opera “The Passenger” by M.S. Weinberg at the Moscow Novaya Opera Theatre. E.V. Kolobo-va quantity of lek-ti-vu in the composition

Petr Pospelov

General memorial

Premiere of "The Passenger" - component boom that has now befallen the work of the previously unappreciated Moses (Mieczyslaw) Weinberg. Both in Russia and in Europe, prominent musicians with sincere enthusiasm are immersed in his scores, which they were previously ready to lay under potato peelings, and, although the performance of all 22 symphonies is still far away, Weinberg’s operas have already gained, if not popularity, then demand: “ The Idiot" has been staged twice in theaters in Germany; this season it will premiere at the Bolshoi Theater. But the composer’s other opuses are surpassed by “The Passenger” in the 1960s. was commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater to Weinberg, but then rejected for abstract humanism. In Russia, “The Passenger” was given a run by conductor Wolf Gorelik: for some reason, the performance he performed in 2007 on the stage of the House of Music is persistently called a concert performance, although there were scenery and costumes, and the singers sang by heart. In the West, "Passenger" came to life with light hand Bregenz festival intendant David Pountney, who invited Teodor Currentzis to conduct it. Since then, the opera has had half a dozen productions around the world, including in Yekaterinburg.

The newly discovered score, meanwhile, sounds like a composition of its time. Weinberg was one of many who were seriously influenced by Shostakovich, plus - as the chief conductor rightly says " New Opera" Jan Latham-Koenig, who studied and presented The Passenger with reverence and care, Weinberg was also influenced by Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. In “The Passenger” there is exemplary dramaturgy, which was also taken care of by the author of the libretto - musicologist Alexander Medvedev, genre music - in particular, the jazz ensemble on stage - reveals the thinking of an experienced film composer ("The Cranes Are Flying"), the climaxes are expressive, which often fall to the share of " an ancient choir-commentator, sternly singing like a man from the lighting boxes. The orchestra is very interesting, sometimes united, sometimes scattered into expressive clusters of solo timbres. As for the vocal parts, they require considerable strength from the singers - and here it is necessary to evaluate the work of the performers of the main parts: Valeria Pfister (former Auschwitz guard Lisa Franz), Natalia Kreslina (Polish Marta, prisoner of the camp), Dmitry Pyanov (husband of the SS man Walter, nothing a German diplomat who is unsullied and for the time being unaware of his wife’s past), Artem Garnov (Martha’s fiancé, an underground musician who throws Bach’s Chaconne in the face of the fascists and receives machine-gun fire without releasing the violin from his hands) and others gave their best - although it was labor They are, to a certain extent, ungrateful, since the voices, rarely supported by the orchestra, sound unfavorably exposed, and the composer often prefers pressure, if not strain, to the search for intonation.

The exception is the songs of prisoners, solved in different national characters– Polish, Russian, French. Among the inhabitants of the barracks there is a Jewish girl, but there is no Jewish song: the opera was composed in Soviet times and the same abstract humanism that ultimately became the reason for the ban demanded that the victims of fascism form an international pantheon. “The Passenger” could not have been an opera about the Holocaust, if we mean the genocide of the Jews by the term, but today it is possible to correct the injustice of history and show on the screen the faces of the exterminated Jews from the Jerusalem memorial “Yad Vashem” - as was done in the play.

The Passenger came to the New Opera as a production project by Joseph Kobzon, and the title was chosen by Sergei Shirokov, a television director who made his theater debut. His work can be called professional, his TV experience was useful in organizing the picture, close-ups and staged shots are competently linked to Larisa Lomakina’s set design and Igor Chapurin’s costumes. The bunks, barbed wire, shaved heads and striped uniforms of the prisoners - everything seemed to have come out of movie screens. In the post-war years, this wounding aesthetics was formed in auteur films - German, Polish, Soviet, while Visconti and Liliana Cavani aestheticized fascism. In the 1990s. Steven Spielberg summarized his search in the mainstream "Schindler's List." Since then, the developed images have become easy to use. But in the same 1990s, a work that was important for Russian and German culture also appeared - Vladimir Sorokin’s play “ Honeymoon

" In this text, different models of pathos (from the repentant of the German to the devil-may-care of his post-Soviet lover) are presented in quotation marks, and the current appeal to journalistic directness looks like a step back, a rejection of complex artistic optics.

Director Shirokov's performance is not lacking in simplicity and directness, but it also contains an image that indicates the two-dimensionality of the possible interpretation. This is the image of Lisa, performed by Pfister, to whom the SS uniform suits her even better than secular toilets, which the film shots with medium shots only emphasize. At the same time, in terms of type, the artist does not at all resemble a German woman, much more like a Soviet beauty from the NKVD, the same Rosa Halperina, nicknamed Heel, whom the heroine recalls in Sorokin’s play. Thus, the ship carrying the “Passenger” becomes one side to Germany, the other to Russia, and the memorial list listed in the final monologue of Polish Marta becomes common to different nations. Colta.Ru, 31

January 2017

Ekaterina Biryukova Holocaust in

live

A few months ago, Mieczysław Weinberg's The Passenger, staged for the first time in Russia, became a bold Yekaterinburg sensation. And now - a new production of this important opera, which tells about the most terrible page of the twentieth century and has been waiting for the Moscow premiere for 40 years. Even more surprising than this unexpected popularity is the name of the producer of the new project - Joseph Kobzon. He found both money and a production team led by television show master Sergei Shirokov. Contrary to expectations, the ominous shadow of show business and unusual for opera world the increased level of PR did no harm. "Passenger" - now from Moscow - again has a well-deserved success. The Ekaterinburg band will soon come to Moscow on tour (timed to coincide with international conference, dedicated to the work of Weinberg), so there will be an opportunity to compare.

The date for the Moscow premiere was January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, which has been celebrated around the world since 2006 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Actually, memory is the main and very clear message that the performance conveys in a journalistic, catchy and professional manner. The author of the scenery is Larisa Lomakina, known as a constant collaborator of Konstantin Bogomolov.

The designer of the costumes is the famous fashion designer Igor Chapurin. The dances were choreographed by Oleg Glushkov. The performance uses a full range of current theatrical means. Curtain screen with staged close-ups main characters

, mood videos and live broadcasts from the stage from two cameras on the sides. A brutal show with prisoners of both sexes stripping naked (about which not a single squeak of an offended spectator is heard in the silent hall) and a ditch with real water built on the proscenium, into which the director sends the surviving concentration camp prisoner Marta to sing her final monologue and painfully wrack the conscience of the former guard with it Lisa. Cinematographically, the most authentic ones succeed each other stage spaces : expensive ocean liner cabins, camp bunks and barbed wire. And they are not inhabited opera characters- German, Russian, Czech, Yiddish, French. Unlike Yekaterinburg, where the original Russian-language version of The Passenger was chosen, the New Opera used the one made for the world premiere in Bregenz, Austria (2010). There are no problems for the public - just like in undubbed films, there are subtitles.

Great respect goes to the artists who heroically overcame emotional, production, musical and linguistic difficulties. First of all - Valeria Pfister (Lisa) and Natalya Kreslina (Marta).

One can reproach the directors for using the techniques that are tart for the opera theater somehow too easily, without suffering and without calculation. That the video sequence is sometimes redundant and distracts from the music, which does not need constant support at all. That the footage with heart-rending barking shepherd dogs need not be repeated, and the birch trees during the song of a Russian prisoner - this is a bit of a weather forecast. But “The Passenger” is not quite an ordinary opera: it is also a document, a poster, and a film montage. And television straightforwardness does not offend her; on the contrary, it can help reach everyone sitting in the hall.

And the theater’s chief conductor Jan Latham-König, who stands behind the console, certainly leaves no chance for them to remain indifferent. The maestro won another victory. He is not afraid of a harsh and ugly sound, animal brass and the whip whistle of the drums. He hits hard, pulling out of Weinberg's music all its uncompromising harshness, suppressed beauty and luxury of direct expression, almost impossible in our time.

RG, January 30, 2017

Irina Muravyova

Camp Chaconne

The New Opera staged an opera about Auschwitz The Moscow premiere of the opera “The Passenger” by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, written half a century ago, in 1968, based on the story of a former prisoner of Auschwitz by the Polish writer Zofia Posmysz (libretto by Alexander Medvedev), took place on the stage of the New Opera. The premiere was timed to International Day

Moscow finally saw this opera by the Soviet-Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, “The Passenger,” which has already played on many stages around the world (starting from the first production by David Pountney at the festival in Bregenz in 2010, at the Warsaw Bolshoi Theater, in Madrid, London, Chicago, Houston , New York, etc.), and last season it was staged at the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater. The stage history of this opera was formed in the format of Soviet times, when the score created by order Bolshoi Theater, were not allowed on stage due to unwanted associations of the camp theme. It was not recommended to stage it for other theaters that showed interest - in Riga, Tallinn, Minsk, Moscow, Prague. Meanwhile, Shostakovich assessed “The Passenger” as a “masterpiece.” The premiere of the score took place almost forty years later, after Weinberg’s death: in 2006, its semi-concert version was performed at the House of Music, performed by artists and an orchestra Musical theater Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko (conductor Wolf Gorelik).

The performance at the New Opera turned out to be the first theatrical "Passenger" in Moscow with its most complex texture for an opera: a concentration camp, torture of people, executions, bullying, barbed wire. But Weinberg's opera is not only the nightmare of Auschwitz, but also the theme human conscience, the hell of the all-human soul, tormented by crimes committed and irrevocable losses of lives. This is the unbearable pain that burned Weinberg himself, who lost his entire family in a Polish concentration camp.

The music of his opera is an unhealed wound, not the past, but the present, and life on an ocean liner plunges not into the mirages of memory, but into the pain-pulsing nightmare of the Nazi camps. The message of his opera is the experience of guilt for what humanity has allowed: mass extermination of people, genocide, sadism of humiliation of other lives. As in the story by Zofia Posmysz, in the opera there is a meeting between two people - the warden Frau Lisa and the former Auschwitz prisoner Martha. The action takes place 15 years after the war. Frau Lisa, traveling with her diplomat husband Walter to Brazil, sees a woman on board the ship who reminds her of the Polish prisoner Martha.

Her memory takes her back to the past, to the tragic episodes of camp life, dragging her into the depths of this hell, like into a whirlpool from which she can no longer escape. In the music (conducted by Jan Latham-König) - the howl of brass and the roll of percussion, the “bony” motive, referring to the fascist theme of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the frantic vocals of the victims, where every sound is like a cry of humanity, German speech and Bach’s immortal “Chaconne” - solo of the prisoner, Martha's fiancé Tadeusz, shot right with a violin in his hands, here is a terrible banal motif of the commandant's favorite waltz, which Tadeusz refused to play and which is performed at a deck party for Lisa on Martha's order. Schubert's military march sounds in the opera like a nightmare of German militarism, and the prisoner Bronka sings a prayer to a Polish church song from the 14th century. Katya breaks the souls of the prisoners with a Russian song. Musical languages ​​and styles are mixed here, just as nationalities, generations, and souls awaiting a terrible death are mixed in Auschwitz.

The performance at the New Opera does not deviate from the lines of musical dramaturgy, presenting on stage the apartments of an ocean liner, the barbed wire of Auschwitz, and the hard, cramped bunks of a barracks filled with prisoners. Cameras on the stage, operating in life mode, display close-ups on the screen, creating a documentary format chronicling the death camp. Memory is symbolized by water - Lethe metaphor flowing along the barracks, rhythmically rolling with the waves of the ocean, filling the ceiling and walls with a stream of photographs of Holocaust victims auditorium

. The work of the artists in this performance cannot be called a game; it is a collective experience of living horror, immersing in pain, in a nightmare of senseless destruction of lives. On the screen - the barking of shepherd dogs, the faces of SS men, prisoners and number 7566, the camp number of Zofia Posmysz herself. The artists sing with incredible tension of sound, with intensity, anger and at the same time soulfulness, living with their whole being

tragic lives people from times gone by. Natalya Kreslina (Marta), Valeria Pfister (Liza), Dmitry Pyanov (Walter), Victoria Shevtsova (Katya), Polina Shameva (Polish Kristina), Alexandra Saulskaya-Shultyaeva (Bronka) and all the artists reveal Weinberg’s main message in the play: to cope with a terrible past, it should never be forgotten.. Having moved - as a refugee - to the USSR, he continued his music studies: he already had a conservatory in Warsaw behind him.

The composer fell under the steamroller of history more than once. Fortunately, he did not spend long in Stalin’s dungeons, as the son-in-law of the actor Solomon Mikhoels, who was villainously killed by the “authorities.” The general public knew Weinberg from film music and soundtracks for cartoons, including “The Cranes Are Flying” and “Winnie the Pooh”, “Afonya”, “Tehran-43”, “Boniface’s Vacation” and “Tiger Tamer”.

But creative destiny His “serious” works were somehow half-hearted. Weinberg was a workaholic and created a lot: several operas and ballets, symphonic and chamber works. During the author’s lifetime, not everything was performed or staged.

The fate of “The Passenger” is indicative in this sense. Despite the fact that the Bolshoi Theater was interested in it, the opera was never accepted for production, and the same thing happened in other theaters of the USSR. Writing about a concentration camp was subject to an unspoken ban from high authorities, who did not like the author’s “abstract humanism.”

But the composer’s talent was highly appreciated by Dmitry Shostakovich: “ I never tire of admiring Weinberg’s opera “The Passenger.” I listened to it three times, studied the score, and each time I understood more and more deeply the beauty and greatness of this music. A masterful work of perfect style and form”.

As a matter of fact, Dmitry Dmitrievich brought the composer together with his future librettist Alexander Medvedev. Medvedev later recalled in an interview: “In the mid-60s, a story by Zofia Posmysh was published in Foreign Literature. I gave Weinberg the magazine, and after a few days he said to me, “I think this could become an opera. Let's try it.” From the brief biographical information I learned that the author was a prisoner of Auschwitz.”

Today Weinberg is recognized as one of the most significant Russian composers twentieth century. After years of oblivion, his compositions are being performed more and more actively. First of all, “The Passenger” (although the opera “The Idiot” based on Dostoevsky is about to be presented at the Bolshoi Theater).

World premiere of “The Passenger” in concert performance took place at the Moscow House of Music in 2006. Her return is complete theatrical form took place in 2010 in Europe, at the festival in Bregenz, when the director was the famous David Pountney, and Teodor Currentzis was at the controls.

Photo: "New Opera"

The first in Russia to stage “The Passenger” was the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater (last season, and in February this performance will be shown on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater). Now “New Opera” has turned to Weinberg’s creation.

In the libretto, based on a story by a Polish writer (Zofia Posmysz is now 94 years old), the action takes place in two places and two time layers. It all begins in the late 50s, on a luxury ocean liner, where a beautiful German woman Lisa (Valeria Pfister) travels with her diplomat husband. Suddenly she meets a passenger - a woman whose face seems familiar.

And she is horrified, fearing exposure: her polished husband (Dmitry Pyanov), concerned only with his career, does not know about his wife’s past. And when he finds out, after the initial shock, he calms down and “profoundly” says, “Time has washed away everything.”

The mysterious passenger is silent all the time, and there is even a version of perception according to which “the viewer will have to constantly doubt whether this is a real person or just a projection of memories from which Lisa cannot free herself.”

During the war, Lisa was a guard in a concentration camp, and the woman on the ship looks like the prisoner Martha, whom the former Nazi considered dead. The situation suddenly changes: pictures of the past appear in the terrible camp barracks, and in the midst of hell on earth there is a piercing psychological duel between the executioners and the victims.

Photo: "New Opera"

The relationship between Lisa, Martha and Martha’s fiancé (a prisoner in the men’s barracks) is a knot made up of the warden’s desire to morally break the prisoners: for some individuals this is sweeter than torture. Lisa, who has no remorse, on the ship will almost be proud that she personally “didn’t lay a finger on anyone.” Oh yes, she just killed from around the corner, with the wrong hands.

Martha's fiancé dies (the SS men call him in so that the musician, before his death, will entertain them with the violin, playing the commandant's favorite waltz, but Tadeusz plays Bach's immortal Chaconne).

Photo: "New Opera"

He said this wonderfully famous conductor Andrew Davis, participant in the production of “Passengers” in Chicago: “ We witness the transformation of Johann Sebastian Bach's masterpiece into a scene of nightmarish violence, when the SS men mock Tadeusz and smash his violin. This is the culmination of the work, at the very end, and this is a metaphor. The destruction of people is shown through the destruction of a masterpiece of music”.

The ending of the opera is symbolic: Martha, who knows what needs to be remembered, and Elsa, who wants to forget everything, look intently into each other's eyes. There's no doubt who won moral victory. AND last picture: Martha, like a spell, repeats the words of Paul Eluard: “ If the echo of their voices fades, we will die”.

Photo: "New Opera"

Weinberg's music, nervous and springy, tense and intimate, bursting into pained cries or whispering something terrible, sometimes recalls Shostakovich, but much more often speaks its own vivid language. There are quotes from Schubert and folk songs(they are sung by female prisoners), bits of the German song “Ah, my dear Augustine,” foxtrot and features of atonality in the score, an eerie “howl” of strings and sharp drum solos, like a blow of a whip.

Plus a male choir commentator, as in ancient tragedy. “You can get out of prison and hard labor, but your gates only let you in, Auschwitz" The music, outstanding in itself, makes a particularly strong impression in the interpretation of conductor Jan Latham-König: it is truly global power and cosmic sorrow.

Photo: "New Opera"

The director of “Passenger” Sergei Shirokov came to Opera theatre from entertainment television. He is an expert on New Year’s “Blue Lights” and Russian singers’ numbers at the Eurovision Song Contest. However, he also did concerts for Dmitry Hvorostovsky, Anna Netrebko and Renee Fleming.

“The Passenger” is Shirokov’s first opera experience, carried out together with set designer Larisa Lomakina and costume designer Igor Chapurin.

Photo: "New Opera"

To be honest, the director’s creative background was cause for concern. But, fortunately, they were not justified. All members of the production team rose to the occasion. Shirokov staged a solid realistic performance with a thick admixture of symbolic and allegorical video additions: there is a screen above the stage, and the faces of the characters are displayed there in the form of a chronicle and “documentary” footage close-up, angry faces of snarling camp dogs, Birch Grove or the embrace of lovers from normal pre-war life.

As Martha talks, photographs of murdered Jews from the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem float across the screen. The scene in which newly arrived prisoners, at gunpoint, strip naked, throw their clothes into a lump, and put on a personality-destroying camp uniform, is very impressive.

The worst thing is the routine ordinariness of what is happening, when the SS men complain about boredom and monotony of work (killing people) and complain that “ people are bad firewood, they don't want to burn”.

And the most burning thing is the prisoners’ frantic hopes for salvation, for life, conveyed with psychological precision of detail. And bravo to those who vocally and actingly got used to the images of the Russian partisan Katya (Victoria Shevtsova), the Czech Vlasta (Olga Terentyeva), the Jewish Hana (Svetlana Zlobina) and the French woman Yvette (Elena Terentyeva).

Lomakina created a curtain with a projection of splashing black water, a container with real water on the proscenium (the sign of a sailing ship and a sign of eternity) - and a double stage image: boxes of the fashionable interiors of the liner in brown and gold tones, and in garish contrast a black and white image of a concentration camp with a barbed wire, guards with machine guns and bunks in the barracks.

Chapurin dressed the characters, including the crowd of passengers on the ship, in “secular” evening costumes. The striped robes of the prisoners and the gray uniforms of the SS men are historical signs of crime.

As the action progresses, the colorful comfort of the ship will shatter into pieces, and the black abyss will turn into human fortitude and heroism, which will cause a lump in the throat. When the female prisoners each sing in their native language (Russian, French, Czech, Yiddish), the lump intensifies: this war really was a world war.

The soloist of the “New Opera” Natalya Kreslina not only sang superbly. And not only did she manage to make her Martha a courageous sufferer. She is a symbol of eternal sorrow. And the final monologue of the former prisoner about the past is a necessary reflection on the horrors of the newest European history. About memory and its meaning. About how important it is to learn lessons from the past and not step on the same rake again.

The Passenger (opera)

"Passenger"(Op. 97, 1967-1968) - an opera by Mieczysław (Moses) Weinberg in two acts, eight scenes with an epilogue to a libretto by Alexander Medvedev based on the short story of the same name by Zofia Posmysz. Weinberg uses elements of twelve-tone music and folk music. Researchers draw parallels with Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” and the music of Britten.

Characters

• Marta, Polish, prisoner, 19 years old in Auschwitz and 34 years old on the ship (soprano)
• Tadeusz, Martha's lover, prisoner, 25 years old (baritone)
• Katya, Russian partisan, prisoner, 21 (soprano)
• Christina, Polish, prisoner, 28 years old (mezzo-soprano)
• Vlasta, Czech, prisoner, 20 years old (mezzo-soprano)
• Hannah, Jewish, prisoner, 18 years old (contralto)
• Yvette, French, prisoner, 15 years old (soprano)
• Old woman, prisoner (soprano)
• Bronka, old prisoner, 50 years old (contralto)
• Lisa, German, 22 years old in Auschwitz and 37 years old on the ship (mezzo-soprano)
• Walter, Lisa's husband, diplomat, 50 years old (tenor)
• First SS fighter (bass)
• Second SS soldier (bass)
• Third SS fighter (tenor)
• Old Passenger/Stuart (actor)
• Chief Matron (actress)

Synopsis

First act

Early 1960s ocean liner. There is a choir on the stage, which during the course of the performance represents either prisoners, or passengers, or German officers, or ordinary spectators from another time.

Scene 1

Walter, a German diplomat, and his young wife Lisa are sailing to Brazil, where Walter is to take up a new position. Suddenly Lisa sees a passenger whom she thinks he knew before. But Lisa is sure that this girl has been dead for a long time. In a state of deep shock, Lisa tells her husband for the first time that during the war she was an SS guard at a camp in Auschwitz. During the conversation they quarrel.

Scene 2

Notes

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2010.

See what “Passenger (opera)” is in other dictionaries:

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Encyclopedia of Newsmakers - (b. 8 XII 1919, Warsaw) The name of M. Weinberg is widely known in musical world . D. Shostakovich called him one of the outstanding composers of our time. An artist of great and original talent and deep intellect, Weinberg amazes with the variety of...

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