Librettist

Stage Director

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

This is a rare chance to hear Tchaikovsky’s rich, multi-layered score. Set against a background of aspiring Ukrainian independence, David Stout assumes the demanding title role, marshalling his Cossack troops.

EPSG:4326

Mazeppa

Grange Park Opera

The plebeians plan to overthrow the aristos; a former pirate becomes Doge; a little girl disappears; poison is poured into a glass of drinking water.

Simon Boccanegra

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

Krzysztof Penderecki has the ability to build fascinating worlds in his operas. His third work for the stage, The Black Mask, transports the audience into the future, to a Lower Silesian town of Bolkenhain (now: Bolków).

Librettist, Stage Director

David Pountney

Events

Past events

8 - 12 Mar, 2026

Passenger · Polish National Opera

Jun 14 - Jul 6, 2025

Mazeppa · Grange Park Opera

About

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