EPSG:4326

Concert in Luzern 2026

Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre

Italienische Sommernacht

Promenadenkonzert Innsbruck

Große Gefühle und herrliche Melodien: Der italienischen Oper verdanken wir einige der unsterblichen Klassik-Hits aller Zeiten. Bei der „Italienischen Sommernacht“ im Brunnenhof der Münchner Residenz spielen sie die Hauptrolle: die schönsten Ouvertüren, Arien und Duette von Verdi, Puccini und Rossini. Dargeboten von hochkarätigen Solisten und den Münchner Symphonikern verheißen sie einen grandiosen Opernabend unter freiem Himmel – überschwänglich, melodienselig, mediterran. Fern aller Gedankenschwere, von der die musikalische Kultur nördlich der Alpen so oft geprägt ist, schwingt diese Musik harmonisch im Gleichklang mit jenem berühmten Lebensgefühl des „dolce vita“, für das Italien überall auf der Welt geliebt und beneidet wird. Viva Italia!

Brunnenhof der Residenz München

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.

Aleksandra Szmyd

Events

Upcoming events

8 - 12 Mar, 2026

Passenger · Polish National Opera

Past events

Jan 23, 2026

Concert in Luzern 2026 · Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra

Jul 21, 2024

Italienische Sommernacht · Münchner Symphoniker

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in Giuditta by Lehár

Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra

Singer in Paganini by Lehár

Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra

Singer in Eine Nacht in Venedig by II

Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra

Yvette in The Passenger by Weinberg

Polish National Opera

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