Weinberg: Die Passagierin (“The Passenger”) (2-CD)

Composer: Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Artists: Dshamilja Kaiser, Nadja Stefanoff, Will Hartmann, Markus Butter, Tetiana Miyus, Antonia-Cosmina Stancu, Anna Brull, Mareike Jankowski, Sieglinde Feldhofer, Joanna Motulewicz, Ju Suk, Chor der Oper Graz, Grazer Philharmoniker
Conductor: Roland Kluttig
Number of Discs: 2
Label: Capriccio
CD Release Date: September 17, 2021

“I simply cannot stop enthusing about Weinberg’s The Passenger. I’ve heard it three times now, studied the score, and every time I understand more of the beauty and greatness of this music. It is a work of consummate form and style and its subject extremely relevant.” – Dmitri Shostakovich

In 1960, Lisa – formerly a guard at Auschwitz and now the wife of a West German diplomat – is on an ocean liner bound to Brazil. She thinks she recognizes in another passenger a woman named Martha, a Polish prisoner under her direct jurisdiction. Through a series of flashbacks across two acts, eight scenes and one epilogue, the audience witnesses the final reckoning between two women as they attempt to escape their pasts. 

The Passenger premiered in 2010 at the Bregenz Festival. With this new production by Oper Graz, composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s powerful Holocaust drama continues to gain international recognition.

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