Lighting Designer

An opera about Auschwitz seemed unimaginable. And yet, it did. It was composed by Mieczysław Weinberg, a Polish-Jewish Varsovian who lost his family in the camp and of whom the opera's director, David Pountney, said that he "spent his life creating music in memory of his lost loved ones." Weinberg was inspired by the novel The Passenger (1962) by Zofia Posmysz. The author survived the camp. The decision to bear witness to the cruelty of the Holocaust was obvious to her. The Passenger describes a voyage on a luxury ocean liner, during which the Polish woman Marta recognizes the elegant woman, Lisa, an SS overseer from Auschwitz (the German woman's real name is Annelise Franz). Weinberg's music, in keeping with the action, is diverse, realistic, and symbolic at once; different when it accompanies conversations in the sun on the ship's deck, with the orchestra playing for the passengers to dance to, and different when the hell of Auschwitz unfolds below deck. The prisoners are of different nationalities, so their solo singing, as well as the seven-voice Song of Life and Death , is multilingual. The prisoners ' Requiem for the Black Wall echoes with the bell, Bach's Chaconne , and the camp orchestra. Weinberg's The Passenger, completed in 1968 in the Soviet Union, could not be performed there because its content was too reminiscent of Soviet labor camps. Only in 2006, after the composer's death, was it performed in Moscow in concert. Did staging an opera about Auschwitz seem impossible? And yet, it was. David Pountney produced it in 2010. First, there was the Bregenz Festival and Warsaw. Then London, Houston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Florida. And everywhere, every time: a stage bisected by light and sound. A cheerful, prosperous Europe. And the hell of the Holocaust. Its memory endures. The world cannot forget.

Passenger

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

Ariadne auf Naxos

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Inferno

Blood, sex, magic and redemption come together in an astonishing musical odyssey. This psychological drama about family duty and private desire, how we die and why we live, is staged at Glyndebourne for the first time.

Parsifal

Glyndebourne

The main characters in Verdi’s reputed »accursed« opera are caught in a whirl of war and destruction. Don Alvaro in the process of eloping with Leonora is discovered by her father and Alvaro accidentally kills him. Before dying the father puts a curse on Leonora. Leonora’s brother Don Carlo resolves to pursue the two lovers and exact vengeance for his father’s murder. The characters over and over again try to evade their past, but it’s no use: the inexorable “forza del destino” (the power of fate) catches up with them.

The Power of Destiny (La forza del destino)

Theater Bonn Opera House

Even though The Haunted Manor is considered Moniuszko’s most remarkable work, it is still hard to fathom the fact that the opera has been put before the Warsaw public over 1,500 times already. Written after Poland had been wiped from the map of Europe, the masterpiece enabled the desolate nation to go on a sentimental journey back to the time when its motherland was self-governing and free from external peril. A praise for family and native traditions evoking the happy days of yore won the hearts of the Polish audience yearning for its heritage. Before the tsarist censors realised the opera had been written to lift the Poles’ spirits and banned it after the third show in 1865, large portions of the public had managed to see the production and spread the word about the hope of restoring freedom that it offered. Unfortunately, Moniuszko did not live to see the next staging. A hundred years since its world premiere, the opera opened the first season at the newly restored Warsaw opera house following its destruction during the Second World War. It was no coincidence: in the course of the intervening decades The Hunted Manor became a symbol of Polish patriotism, Poland, and the strength of her nation that has risen from ashes many times it its history. 

The Haunted Manor

Imposing choruses and colossal tableaux accompany a story about intrigues, power play and an affair between stepmother and son in Ottorino Respighi’s last grand opera. Surrounded by political struggles, the figures become entangled in personal conflicts inextricably leading towards catastrophe and the cruel ending of a burning at the stake. For LA FIAMMA, Respighi created music going far beyond his illustrative-seeming “Trilogia romana” for which he is known in concert halls today. Yet in essence, the composer remained true to his colourful tonal language – the result is a musical amalgamation of French impressionism, influences of Russian music and a classicistic reimagining of Italian renaissance music. The archaic story and expansive dimensions of the operatic epos are reminiscent of the genre of the historical epic film, which was gaining popularity at the same time the opera was composed. This meant LA FIAMMA hit the nerve of the time, ensuring international success soon after its premiere. Over the course of decades, the work was slowly forgotten, yet the renowned critic and musicologist Paolo Isotta still praised LA FIAMMA in 2015 as a unique symbiosis of historicism and modernism, claiming its place among the 20th century’s masterworks of musical drama.

The flame

Deutsche Oper Berlin

A rich man has commissioned a young composer to write an opera for a celebration: Ariadne auf Naxos. But because this tragic opera about Ariadne, abandoned by her lover Theseus, isn't entertaining enough for him, he invites a troupe of comedians to perform their farces concurrently with the tragedy. This is an imposition for the composer, but also an opportunity: the grief of the abandoned Ariadne clashes with the joie de vivre of the comedienne Zerbinetta. In his production of the work, which premiered in 1916, David Hermann brings the world of Greek tragedy into contact with the lightness of French Rococo. "Ariadne auf Naxos" is an opera about opera, about fidelity and change, and about the transformative power of love.

Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne on Naxos)

Semperoper Dresden

When two young people in Verona first set eyes on each other, their lives are changed forever. They know they are destined for each other, even though their families are sworn enemies due to a blood feud. Their tragic fate is therefore inevitable.

Roméo et Juliette

La Monnaie - De Munt

On one side, the stage: Zerbinette and her commedia dell'arte troupe . On the other, the myth: Ariadne abandoned by Theseus. In the middle, a composer mistreated by his patron. From their unlikely encounter bursts a firework display of fantasy.

With Ariadne auf Naxos , Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal elevate the theatre to a witty mise en abyme: a patron brings together at his home a composer, commissioned to write an opera seria , and a troupe of Italian comic actors. Their task is to give a joint performance!

Ariadne on Naxos

Opéra de Dijon

The monodramas focus on two women as they try to overcome life crises. Abandoned by her lover, the nameless heroine of Poulenc’s ‘tragédie lyrique’ is striving to free herself from her past. Seemingly calm and collected, she reveals her sorry state after a call from the unfaithful man. Glued to a telephone receiver for 40 minutes, she goes through different stages of a mental breakdown, only to give in to the old love. The unnamed woman in Schönberg’s monodrama is in an equally pitiful situation. Lost in a dark forest, she is searching for her lover. Eventually, she escapes the woods and finds her man, but their meeting is not what she expected.

La Voix humaine Another Silence Erwartung

What connects Louise, the young waitress at “La Petite Bohème”, Raoul, an unscrupulous deserter, Gabriel, an upright mathematics teacher, and the mysterious Désiré, by turns spokesperson for the Ministry of Information, street singer and priest? The “phoney war” and the debacle of 1940 are experienced in different ways by each of these children of catastrophe. As their epic journey along the roads of the exodus unfolds, the past of Louise’s mother comes to light, revealing unexpected links between the characters.

Lighting Designer

Fabrice Kebour

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 29 - Oct 17, 2026

Roméo et Juliette · La Monnaie / De Munt

7 - 9 Feb, 2027

Ariadne on Naxos · Opéra de Dijon

Mar 25 - Apr 4, 2027

La Voix humaine Another Silence Erwartung · Polish National Opera

Apr 21 - May 11, 2027

Mirror of our sorrows · Opéra national de Paris

Past events

8 - 12 Mar, 2026

Passenger · Polish National Opera

1 - 10 Mar, 2026

Ariadne auf Naxos · Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

About

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