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| David Danholt,Daveda Karanas (Yossi Zwecker) |
The Israeli premiere of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera “The Passenger”, a production of the Israeli Opera at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center on April 30th 2019, was directed by David Pountney (UK). Steven Mercurio (USA) making his debut on the Israeli music scene, conducted local- and guest singers, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion and the Israeli Opera Chorus (chorus master Ethan Schmeisser). Mostly in German, the libretto was also partly in Polish, with some French, English, Czech, Yiddish and Russian. There were surtitles in Hebrew and English.
“The Passenger”, the first of seven operas by Weinberg, is based partly on the real-life experience of Polish journalist Zofia Posmysz (now 95), who was a prisoner in Auschwitz. Her account - “The Passenger in Cabin 45” - began as a radio drama in 1959, appearing as an autobiographical novel in 1962, then to be transformed into an award-winning movie. Having encountered the book, Weinberg, using Alexander Medvedev’s Russian libretto, began work on the opera in 1968. It took over forty years to be premiered in concert form in Moscow in 2006, its first fully staged version taking place at the Bregenz Festival in 2010. In 2011, the opera, directed by David Pountney, premiered at both the Warsaw National Opera and the English National opera to full houses, receiving rave critical reviews.
Mieczysław Weinberg, born into a Polish musical Jewish family, managed to flee eastward after Hitler's invasion of Poland, moving to Minsk, Belarus, where he studied composition. After war broke out between Russia and Germany, he escaped to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, finding work in a local opera house. From there he sent the manuscript of his Symphony No.1 to Dmitri Shostakovich, who suggested he move to Moscow. Weinberg settled in the Russian capital and lived there until the end of his life. He and Shostakovich became close friends and colleagues. Weinberg’s parents and sister died in a concentration camp and, although Weinberg managed to escape persecution by the Nazis, he himself was imprisoned by the KGB and only released after Stalin’s death.
Lisa (Daveda Karanas, USA, Israeli Opera debut), a former Aufseherin, or Auschwitz overseer, is travelling with Walter, her diplomat husband (David Danholt, Denmark, Israeli Opera debut) on an ocean liner when she sees a solitary passenger who appears to be Marta (Adrienn Miksch, Hungary, Israeli Opera debut), a young prisoner from the camp who had been manipulated and taunted by Lisa. With flashbacks to the camp, Lisa relives memories of Auschwitz and struggles to tell her husband the truth of her role. Their love, however, is strong and weathers the storm; indeed, she was “only carrying out orders.” The fact is that it is never certain whether the young woman on the boat, her face veiled, is Marta; the Aufseherin may indeed be hallucinating, her mind corroded by guilt and fear. The opera’s main love story is between two young Poles at Auschwitz - Marta and her fiancé Tadeusz (Morgan Smith, USA, Israeli Opera debut) - for whom Lisa makes opportunities for the two to meet. Another strong and moving element of “The Passenger” is the comradeship and mutual support of the women prisoners in Auschwitz in an effort to preserve their humanity and sanity.
The result of the long-standing collaboration between David Pountney and stage designer (the late) Johan Engels has resulted in stage sets that are both eye-catching and imbued with symbols - the gleaming white clothes of the wealthy on the ocean liner, the dark barracks of the camp, large structures moving on- and off the stage on railway tracks, sometimes pushed back out of view by women prisoners, the tight-lipped, dapper, blue-suited men of opera chorus observing the Auschwitz camp scenes from above (the silent majority?), their bass chants of lamentation punctuating their silence, the women inmates’ eyes always turned down in the presence of camp authorities but animated when in their own company. Another long-standing force in the production is Romanian-born costume-designer Marie-Jeanne Lecca, whose fine costuming was part of former productions as of the 2010 Bregenzer Festspiele. Stage action was tasteful, pointed and poignantly understated, giving emphasis to moments rich in powerful meaning, among them, Marta’s 20th birthday celebration and her delicate singing of nature and death, her and Tadeusz’s uneasy meeting and the irony of the jazz band on board ship playing the camp Kommandant's favourite waltz. Weinberg’s superb score, endorsing each moment at hand, is both gripping and restrained, richly orchestrated and as uncompromising as it is aesthetically pleasing. One of the most soul-stirring moments was that presented by Katya, a young Russian partisan prisoner (Alla Vasilevitsky); with the orchestra reduced to a barely-audible drone, she gives a memorable and haunting performance of a Russian folk song. Another highly impactful moment was when Tadeusz, requested to play the Kommandant’s favourite waltz on the violin, performs the Chaconne from Bach's Partita for Violin No. 2 (played by Dotan Tal), making a defiant musical protest and sealing his own fate, with all hell breaking out simultaneously in Weinberg’s orchestral backing. With outstanding artists in the lead roles, supported by a host of dedicated, first-class singers, attentive, finely-shaped choral singing and the precise- and detailed playing of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion drawing together the threads of the work’s eclectic mix of musical styles, Steven Mercurio navigated “The Passenger” through stormy waters with much sensitiveness and just as much attention to the beauty and meaning of the work. Never over-dramatic, never over-sentimental, the performance kept audience members at the edge of their seats. An outstanding work in stage performance of the highest standard.
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