Organization

Bregenzer Festspiele

Singer

Soprano

Elena Kelessidi

Marta

Baritone

Artur Rucinski

Tadeusz

Svetlana Doneva

Katya

Mezzo-soprano

Adrian Angelico

Krzystina

Elzbieta Wroblewska

Vlasta

Contralto

Agnieszka Rehlis

Hannah

Talia Or

Yvette

Helen Field

Old Woman

Liuba Sokolova

Bronka

Michelle Breedt

Liese

Tenor

Roberto Saccà

Walter

Bass

Tobias Hächler

1. SS Officer

Wilfried Staber

2. SS Officer

David Danholt

3. SS Officer

Richard Angas

Elderly Passenger

Steward

Heide Capovilla

Oberaufseherin

Spoken

Kapo

Conductor

Teodor Currentzis

Stage director

David Pountney

Set designer

Johan Engels

Costume designer

Marie-Jeanne Lecca

Lighting designer

Fabrice Kebour

Others

Philharmonischer Chor Prag

Orchestra

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Die Passagierin -  (The Passenger)

Bregenz

Austria

Seebühne

It was the most acclaimed production of the 2010 festival summer: artistic director and director David Pountney brought the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) and his opera "The Passenger" back into general interest at the Bregenz Festival. Born in Warsaw in 1919 to Jewish-Polish parents, Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939; his parents and sister were killed by the Nazis. Weinberg wanted his music to commemorate the fate of the murdered Jews. His oeuvre includes 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, sonatas, operas, ballets, operettas and film music.

Dmitri Shostakovich supported the composer, who was 14 years his junior - and yet Weinberg was overshadowed by the great master. Weinberg was only rediscovered as one of the most important composers in the Soviet Union in 2010, with the staged premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's opera "The Passenger" and the presentation of other works by Weinberg as part of the Bregenz Festival.

The libretto of "Passenger" based on the novel of the same name by the Polish Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz tells how the German diplomat's wife Lisa is caught up in her past as a guard in the Auschwitz concentration camp on the ship trip with her husband to Brazil. The Polish prisoner Martha, whose love for fellow prisoner Tadeusz is the subject of the second strand, has survived martyrdom and her silent presence forces Lisa to deal with her past in flashbacks.

"Magnificent, moving - triumphantly rediscovered" (FAZ).

Photos