Elizabeth – Houston Grand Opera brought composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s and librettist Alexander Medvedev’s The Passenger to the Park Avenue Armory.  Wow what a tremendous space to hold this opera.  The space alone lends gravitas, and the acoustics really worked for the opera.  The percussion at the opening of the opera sounds like gunfire; it echoes ominously in the Armory. 

Director David Pountney’s staging was terrific.  The stage is the deck of a ship, with all the passengers dressed in innocent clean white, including the waiters.  The only element of impurity is a lone man smoking on the top deck.  Underneath the ship is Auschwitz—buried at sea—complete with boxcars of prisoners dressed in rags on a moving circular track around the ship.  The set is expanded beyond the ship and circular track as even the men working the side lights are dressed up as SS guards.

We meet a German couple, Liese (Michelle Breedt) and her husband, Walter (Joseph Kaiser), who are sailing to Brazil—Walter has just received a diplomatic post there.  It will be a fresh start for the two of them after the war.   They are excited and ready to dance on deck with others when Liese sees a veiled woman whom she believes is a former prisoner, Marta, from Auschwitz, where Liese was a guard.  Her husband didn’t know about Liese’s history with the SS and in short order Liese panics and tells Walter about her past.  The rest of the opera has flashbacks to Auschwitz down below the ship as Liese tells her story to her husband.

Weinberg’s music is evocative.  He was a contemporary and friend of Shostakovich and I greatly enjoyed the varied composition in The Passenger.  Parts of the score create feelings of tension and melancholy, while there are interludes of curious relief in Jazz music throughout the opera.  These occur on both the top deck and down below in Auschwitz.  There are also threads of folk songs that sound Russian or Polish woven in the background at points.  Throughout the score we are reminded of time passing: a percussionist creates the sound of a clock chiming signaling the last few moments for some prisoners, or time quickly escaping for a pair of lovers.  Texture was added to the sound by layering music: at times it sounded as though pre-recorded music piped in through speakers was coming from the ship and then the live orchestra, conducted by Patrick Summers, moved in picking up the music as the speakers faded.  And later a quartet played from one of the decks of the ship; it nicely compensated for the orchestra being off to the side at the Armory. 

Walter reacts with rage at his wife’s revelation, the “unbelievable, despicable, monstrous base deceit”.  He rails at how “[t]he past deforms our inner being”.  Yet he doesn’t talk of leaving her.  He knows it is a stain they, as Germans, must bear together.  There is a desire to avoid and forget the past, yet it’s still there.  How does one cope?  They both sidestep talking directly about the past yet still keep coming back to it.  “All our dreams destroyed in an instant; deceit by silence.”  While Walter here refers directly to Liese’s failure to tell him about her past, this look toward the future also touches upon issues of today: how do we deal with this in the 21^stcentury?  Must the Germans always remain tainted by the Holocaust? 

Liese assures her husband she didn’t take part in the horrors of Auschwitz.  The music takes on a carnival sound at that point, perhaps mocking her.  Liese complains that Marta didn’t appreciate her acts of kindness—she seems to be experiencing a cognitive dissonance.  What do people do with themselves after committing these horrific acts? I find it interesting that Zofia Posmysz, a Polish Catholic political prisoner at Auschwitz who wrote the original radio play and then novel upon which this opera is based, wrote this from the perspective of the SS guard.  Was this an attempt to identify with the guards and have some sense of power?  Did this give her or perhaps Weinberg, who fled Poland for Russia as the Nazis invaded Poland and lost his entire family, the ability to exact some sort of revenge or punishment even if it’s only through story?

The scenes with the women prisoners in Auschwitz are terrifically effective, and there is some great talent in the chorus.  Melody Moore as Marta was great, her voice was clear and aching. Morgan Smith as her fiancé, Tadeusz, reflects a quiet attempt at resistance, making Marta flowers, drawing pictures and eventually makes a large statement, refusing to be told what music to play for the commandant, even though it will cost him his life.

One of the most visually moving moments for me was when the SS officers in Auschwitz sat together smoking as the chorus of Auschwitz prisoners sing “Auschwitz” over and over (“Oswiecim”) as they wait to go up in smoke.

For all the terrific music and staging though, I was very aware of time throughout the whole opera.  It was rather long.  Half of our row didn’t return after intermission.  I felt parts could definitely have been condensed.  And elements of the scenes in Auschwitz didn’t work. The thread of the Tadeusz story feels artificially overlaid.  And the birthday scene for Marta feels self-conscious and inserted to create more engagement with the camp.  It didn’t quite fit for me.

The more effective scenes leave us with the question of how do you live with yourself after being part of the SS?  Walter and Liese insist “[w]e have the right to forget the past” and that “[t]ime will wash away the evil past”, while in the camps the prisoners heading to the gas chamber state “[n]o forgiveness, never forgive them”, “[d]o not forget us”.  In the end there is no satisfying resolution to the opera’s story, as there is no resolution to the Holocaust; but was seeing Marta a dream?  Real?  Or perhaps looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life is part of the burden you bear after being in the SS?

Shawn – I won’t try to compete with the elegant critical delineation above, but I will say this –

The Passenger has moments of true beauty and terrifying horror.  The production by David Pountney and set design by Johan Engels is fantastic.  The light clean walls of the cruise ship hovering above the dark dirt and horror of Auschwitz perfectly evoke and mirror Liese’s internal psychic and emotional landscape.  Just below her luxury cruise cabin is death, no matter how she chooses to ignore, polish or whitewash it.  The past remains.   Her consciousness is hovering precariously just above this past, until the past bursts into her present and drags her below to face what she has done.  Powerful stuff.  I thought of The Masque of Red Death several times during the production actually.

The Passenger was also admirably sung especially by Michelle Breedt as Liese, Melody Moore as the surviving prisoner Marta and Uliana Alexyuk as the young French Auschwitz inmate Ivette. 

Expanding the perspective in order to provide some greater context and depth for the other characters is of course dramatically necessary and vital BUT the farther away we venture from the initial presented perspective of Liese’s first person account of her story to her husband, and the longer we stay away from it, the greater the risk of breaking the audience’s connection to the story.  I think that is what happened with me and why I found my mind wandering.  

But even with my mind’s meanderings it was a striking evening.