Fifty Years After The Fact, An Unknown Opera, ‘The Passenger,’ Gets Discovered
He is utterly unknown, but the 20th century Russian musical heavyweight Dmitri Shostakovich described his work in this way: “Music of beauty and enormity … it is a perfect masterpiece … it is a hymn to humanity … to the international solidarity of those who, subjected to the most terrible evil, stood up against fascism.”
Shostakovich was talking about the first opera of his good friend Mieczyslaw Weinberg, “The Passenger.” It was supposed to have been premiered by the Bolshoi in 1968, but instead, it vanished from the world’s musical consciousness along with Weinberg’s repertoire.
Though at the turn of the 21st century, Weinberg has been “discovered.”
In 2006 in Moscow, an orchestral version of “The Passenger” premiered, which was then followed by premieres in Austria, Warsaw, London, Houston and New York City.
And this week, “The Passenger” received its Chicago premiere at the Lyric Opera.
“The Passenger” tells two stories: one aboard a ship headed to Brazil in the 1960s and another at the horrific Auschwitz concentration camp.
Liese, sung by Daveda Karanas, was an SS officer at Auschwitz but in the 1960s is traveling with her husband across the sea. On board, she spots a woman who looks like one of the Auschwitz victims, Marta, sung by Amanda Majeski, whom she had tormented in years past. Moving between the ocean liner and Auschwitz, violence, psychological games, desperation and despair play out for both Marta and Liese. But it’s Marta, not Liese, who has the final word.
The Lyric Opera’s performance will come to WABE as part of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Radio Broadcast this summer.
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