OPERA COMPANION Contents 2 A SYNOPSIS OF THE OPERA 5 A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL TIMELINE 10 REGARDLESS OF FRONTIERS: ART AND CENSORSHIP 12 ZOFIA POSMYSZ: A SURVIVOR S STORY 14 MIECZYSŁAW WEINBERG, MUSICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHER The Passenger by Mieczysław Weinberg 15 THE WORDS TO THE OPERA 16 MUSIC OF HORROR, MUSIC OF GRACE 18 THEATER OF MEMORY 20 AUSCHWITZ 21 THE PRISONERS OF AUSCHWITZ 22 MUSIC IN HELL 24 FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION/ WORKS CITED Lyric Opera presentation of The Passenger generously made possible by Richard P. and Susan Kiphart, Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel, the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation, Sidley Austin LLP, Manfred and Fern Steinfeld, and Helen and Sam Zell, with additional support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music program. Written by: Maia Morgan with Thomas Holliday photo: Karl Forster
A Synopsis of the Opera The Passenger Opera in two acts in Russian, German, Polish, French, Yiddish, Czech, and English by Mieczysław Weinberg (mee-etch-ez-wahv VINE-behrg) Libretto by Alexander Medvedev (med-vyeh-def) Based on a story by Zofia Posmysz (so-fee-yah POHS-mish) Completed 1968; stage premier July 21, 2010, Bregenz Festival, Austria CHARACTERS Liese/Anneliese Franz (LEE-zah)... Overseer at Auschwitz, age 37 on the ship (mezzo-soprano) Walter (VALL-tehr)... German diplomat, age 50, Liese s husband (tenor) Marta... Polish prisoner at Auschwitz, age 34 on the ship (soprano) Tadeusz (tah-day-oosh)...polish prisoner, Marta s fiancé, age 25 (baritone) Katya (KAHT-yah)... Russian partisan prisoner, 21 years old (soprano) Krzystina (kreesh-tin-ah)... Polish prisoner, age 28 (mezzo-soprano) Vlasta (vuh-lah-stah)...czech prisoner, age 20 (mezzo-soprano) Hannah (HAH-nah)... Greek Jewish prisoner, age 18 (contralto) Yvette (ee-vet)...french prisoner, age 15 (soprano) Old Woman... German prisoner (soprano) Bronka (BRAHN-kah)...Russian prisoner, age 50 (contralto) First SS Officer... (bass) Second SS Officer... (bass) Third SS Officer... (tenor) Older Passenger... (bass) Ship s Steward... English (speaking role) Kapo (KAH-poh)... German prisoner working for the SS (speaking role) Chief Women s Overseer at Auschwitz... (speaking role) Kommandant of Auschwitz; prisoners and SS officers at Auschwitz; ship s captain, passengers, and crew; chorus SETTING An ocean liner sailing for Brazil in the early 1960s, with flashbacks to Auschwitz concentration camp in the mid 1940s ACT I photo: Catherine Ashmore SCENE 1: Ocean liner, day German diplomat Walter Kretschmer and his wife Liese are headed to Brazil for a three-year posting. In high spirits, they bid Germany and Europe farewell. Walter remarks upon Liese s youth during the war years, and says Brazil will do her good. Suddenly, Liese blanches at the appearance of a passenger who resembles a prisoner from Auschwitz where, unbeknownst to her husband, Liese served in the SS. Flashing back to Auschwitz, an officer appears and orders Liese to regain her composure, calling her Aufseherin, the term for a female SS overseer. 2
Back in her cabin, Liese tries to shake the fear that the woman on deck was a prisoner named Marta, whom she believed to have been executed at Auschwitz. She summons the ship s steward and bribes him to look into the passenger s identity. Walter joins his wife, ready to go dancing, but as they exit their cabin, the stranger appears in the hallway. Liese drags Walter back inside and confesses that she was an SS overseer at Auschwitz. Blindsided, Walter is furious. Liese admits she never told him of her past for fear of losing him. She tells him how she d felt drawn to Marta, whose pride and contempt she longed to break. The steward returns, announcing the passenger in Cabin 45 is a British woman traveling alone to Brazil. The couple breathes a sigh of relief, though Walter wonders if there s more to the story. SCENE 2: Roll-call, Auschwitz, early morning A group of SS officers watches the female prisoners line up. The men boast they are making history at Auschwitz, purging the Third Reich of its enemies, but complain the killing isn t efficient enough. At roll call, the prisoners numbers are called. The Chief Women s Overseer and Liese talk about enlisting Marta to help manage the other prisoners. Marta doesn t trust Liese and wonders what she wants from her. SCENE 3: Women s barracks, evening A transport of new prisoners arrives. An old woman raves that they are all about to go up the chimney as smoke. Marta and Krzystina try to calm everyone. Bronka prays for strength and protection for her family. Krzystina rails that God has forgotten them all, which Bronka and Yvette find blasphemous. The door crashes open and Katja, a Russian partisan, is thrown in. Marta calls for water and a candle. A Kapo finds a note in Polish that Katja brought in. Liese admires Marta s control over her fellow inmates and, knowing her to be a Pole, orders her to read the note Marta recognizes it as a message between members of the resistance, but reads it as a love note, substituting the name of her own sweetheart Tadek (Tadeusz). Satisfied for the time being, Liese exits. Katja thanks Marta for saving her life. Back on the ship, Liese tells Walter she later discovered Marta s lie. Walter remains silent as the curtain falls. photo: Catherine Ashmore 3
ACT II SCENE 1: A storeroom for confiscated goods, Auschwitz, morning Liese watches prisoners sort items confiscated from other prisoners: musical instruments, clothing, shoes, etc. An officer asks Liese to choose a violin so one of his prisoners can play the Kommandant s favorite photo: Catherine Ashmore waltz. Liese finds an instrument, and the officer leaves, saying he ll send the prisoner to collect it. When the prisoner appears, Liese points him to the violin and exits.the violin player is Tadeusz, Marta s fiancé before she was imprisoned. They are stunned to see each other still alive. Marta says she must look ugly and worn, but Tadeusz says she is beautiful. They reminisce about their past life together but freeze when Liese returns. Tadeusz confesses that they were a couple, in that world that still knows of engagements. Liese insinuates that she will break the rules for them, and tears up the confiscated note before she exits again. Katja enters and warns the couple not to trust Liese. She tells Tadeusz that Marta saved her life by misreading the note Tadeusz had given her. A loudspeaker blares music that Tadeusz says is the Kommandant s favorite waltz. SCENE 2: Workshop in men s barracks, Auschwitz, day Tadeusz reads a note from a member of the resistance: Kiev has been liberated from the Nazis. As Liese enters, he hides the note. She scrutinizes a medallion and recognizes the portrait engraved on it as Marta. Liese tries to entice Tadeusz to let her set up a meeting between him and Marta, but Tadeusz refuses. In another flash forward to the ship, Liese tells Walter that Tadeusz in fact all the prisoners were blinded by hate. SCENE 3: Women s barracks, evening The women congratulate Marta on her twentieth birthday. Marta reflects on what she would choose if God let her choose how and when she would die. There are gifts: a carrot and onion from Yvette, a scarf from Vlasta, and roses secretly delivered from Tadeusz. Liese enters and tells Marta that Tadeusz refused her offer to arrange a meeting with Marta; Marta replies she s certain Tadeusz had good reason. Liese stalks out angrily. Yvette gives Bronka a French lesson, conjugating the verb to live. The women describe their longing for home. Katja sings a song of her grandmother s. The loudspeaker blares numbers for the evening s selection. A Kapo, Liese, and officers with machine guns appear to collect the women whom have been selected: Vlasta, Hannah, Yvette, and Katja among them. Katja urges her friends not to forget the dying or forgive the Germans. Marta faces off with Liese, who tells her she ll be selected soon enough, saying she s spared her to hear Tadeusz s concert. SCENE 4: Ocean liner, day The steward informs Liese and Walter that though the passenger in Cabin 45 is a British citizen, she s not English and may be Polish. Again, Liese defends her service at Auschwitz. They head to the salon, where Liese dances with the Captain while an elderly passenger teases Walter. The passenger from Cabin 45 requests a tune from the orchestra leader, who strikes up the same waltz that Tadeusz was ordered to perform the Kommandant s favorite. Liese and Walter are distraught, and Liese insists on confronting the passenger. She approaches, but then falls back in fear as the passenger stares her down. SCENE 5: The concert, Auschwitz An officer orders Tadeusz to play the waltz. Instead, Tadeusz plays Bach s Chaconne in D Minor. Before Tadeusz can finish the beautiful piece, an officer seizes and smashes the violin, and Tadeusz is dragged off to his death. EPILOGUE: The bank of a river Marta vows to keep the memory of those murdered at Auschwitz alive: If one day your voices should fall silent, then we are all extinguished. 4
A Historical and Cultural Timeline Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, is imprisoned after a failed coup in Munich. In prison he will write his manifesto, Mein Kampf, in which he will call for the removal of all Jews from Germany. On December 5, Joseph Goebbels (who will become Hitler s propaganda minister) leads 200 Nazi Storm Troopers in violently disrupting the premiere of the film All Quiet on the Western Front at its premiere in Berlin. The film, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, unflinchingly depicts the horrors of war. Remarque s novel will be banned from bookstores and libraries and tossed into Nazi bonfires. Zofia Posmysz, who wrote the novel on which The Passenger is based, is born on August 23, in Kraków, Poland. Mieczysław Weinberg is born in Warsaw, Poland on December 8 into a Yiddish theater family. Released from prison, Hitler establishes the SS (Schutzstaffel or Protection Squadrons). In the Nazi state, the SS will handle security and racial policy. They will control the German police force and build and operate the concentration camps. The New York Stock Market crashes and the Great Depression begins with worldwide repercussions. 1919 1923 1925 1929 1930 5
Joseph Goebbels is appointed to head the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, which controls the media, arts, and culture in Nazi Germany. 40,000 people gather in Berlin to hear Goebbels shout, You do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. Nationalist students march in torch-lit parades and hurl books into bonfires; the Nazis burn over 25,000 books they consider un-german. Banned books include works by H.G. Wells, Bertolt Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, Marx, Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, and Tolstoy. In what will be known as Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), Jewish shops and department store windows are smashed and their contents destroyed all over Germany, Austria, and other Nazi controlled areas. Hundreds of synagogues are burned. 30,000 German Jewish men are rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Artists identified as degenerate artists are dismissed from teaching positions and forbidden to exhibit, sell or even create their artwork. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected president of the United States. Unemployment and poverty in Germany caused by the Great Depression contributes to a rise in support for the Nazi party. It becomes the largest party in the Reichstag (German parliament). In an open letter to the student body of Germany, Helen Keller, whose books were among those banned, writes: History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. Adolf Hitler declares himself Führer (leader or dictator) of Germany. The Nazi regime organizes the Degenerate Art Exhibition, a presentation of 650 works of art confiscated from German museums. Degenerate art is the term the Nazis use to describe virtually all modern art. Such art is banned on the grounds that it is un-german, Jewish, and/or Communist. 1932 1933 1934 1937 1938 6
The Germans establish the Warsaw ghetto. Rudolph Höss, who will become the first commandant of Auschwitz, identifies the Polish town of Oświęcim as a site for a concentration camp. The camp is initially intended for political prisoners. The Nazis change the name of the area to Auschwitz, and Höss borrows its motto from Dachau, another concentration camp: Arbeit Macht Frei Work Makes You Free. On September 1, World War II begins. The Nazis invade Poland, defeating the Polish army within weeks. Weinberg, newly graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory, flees on foot to Minsk. Germany begins bombing of London. Hitler invades Russia; Weinberg flees a thousand miles further east. By the end of the war, Weinberg s parents, sister, and most of his family will die at the hands of the Nazis. The U.S. enters World War II. In what will be known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jews with homemade weapons fight off German troops when they come to deport them to concentration camps. They hold out for several months until the ghetto is burned by the Germans and the Jews that remain are sent to Treblinka. On April 15, Zofia Posmysz is accused of distributing flyers for the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Union for Armed Struggle) and arrested. After six weeks in a Gestapo jail in Kraków, she is sent to Auschwitz- Birkenau. 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 7
Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the Human Rights commission Fifty nations sign the United Nations Charter. The UN, which will grow to 193 member states, is established to foster peace, develop friendship and respect among nations, and help conquer hunger, disease, and illiteracy around the world. The Sonderkommandos (work units of prisoners) at Auschwitz revolt, destroying Crematorium IV. Some prisoners manage to escape but are recaptured. In retaliation, the SS kill many Sonderkommandos regardless of whether they had participated. On January 27, Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. Only a few thousand survivors remain, along with warehouses containing personal belongings of the victims: hundreds of thousands of men s suits, over 800,000 items of women s clothing and more than seven tons of human hair shaved from victims. Having been transferred to another concentration camp, Zofia Posmysz will not be liberated until May 2. On assignment in Paris, Zofia Posmysz thinks she hears a familiar German voice in the Place de la Concorde: that of her female overseer at Auschwitz. It will inspire her to write the radio play The Passenger in Cabin 45. Train tracks are built directly into Auschwitz to handle the tens of thousands of Jews being transported to the gas chambers. The war in Europe ends. The UN General Assembly adopts The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which states the fundamental freedoms to which all people are entitled. 1944 1945 1948 1959 8
Image courtesy of Peermusic Classical, New York and Hamburg Photos of Weinberg provided by Tommy Persson Olga Rakhalskaya Weinberg completes his opera The Passenger. Before it can premiere at the Bolshoi in Moscow, it is banned by the Soviet government. The Passenger has its stage premiere on July 21 at the Bregenz Festival in Austria Zofia Posmysz publishes her novel The Passenger in Polish. It will be translated into fifteen languages. Weinberg dies in Moscow on February 26. Ten years later, the concert version of his opera The Passenger will premiere in Moscow. 1962 1968 1996 2010 9
Regardless of Frontiers The Passenger should have premiered in 1968 at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow but the opera never opened. Opinions differ on why Soviet authorities cancelled the production. The Soviet government often objected to the topic of the Holocaust, regarding the suffering of its own citizens as more important than that of the Jews. Zofia Posmysz, on whose novel the opera is based, recalls, The authorities suspended it as a work of abstract humanism. Only the Minister of Culture could tell you what that meant. (Duchen) Censorship is defined as the suppression of arts and media considered objectionable or dangerous by an institution, state, or governing body. Censorship has been a trademark of dictatorships throughout history. The Soviet regime was known for its pervasive censorship as well as its rampant anti-semitism. In 1962, when Dmitri Shostakovich premiered his Thirteenth Symphony, which featured the poem Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, it provoked a firestorm of controversy. After a handful of performances, both symphony and poem, which commemorated the murder of an estimated 70,000 Jews by Nazis in a ravine Art and Censorship Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Ukraine, were banned. Weinberg faced more violent anti-semitism than Shostakovich. His father-in-law, Solomon Mikhoels, was assassinated by Stalin s regime, and Weinberg himself was imprisoned for a time, only attaining his release upon Stalin s death in 1953. When it came to censorship, the Nazi regime rivaled the Soviets. The Propaganda Ministry led by Joseph Goebbels seized control of all media in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, art, music, movies and radio. Any viewpoints threatening Nazi beliefs were censored. During the spring of 1933, Nazi students, professors, and librarians made lists of books they deemed anti-german. On the night of May 10, they raided libraries and bookstores, marched in torch lit parades, and threw books into bonfires works by Einstein, Freud, Hemingway, Nabokov, Tolstoy, and hundreds more. Almost all Modernist art was considered degenerate by the Nazi regime. Degenerate artists were subject to dismissal from teaching positions and forbidden to exhibit, sell, or sometimes even to create their art. Similar restrictions were placed on atonal or modern music, but jazz though officially frowned upon by the Nazis continued to be played 10
large head due to its immense popularity. It was strictly policed, however, as apparent in these rules issued by a Gauleiter a regional official for the Reich in Nazioccupied Czechoslovakia: Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoires of light orchestras and dance bands Preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl. (Gould) Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Article 19 states, Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Freedom of expression: a basic human right. Censorship can be the canary in the coalmine that warns of the potential for further violations of human rights. As Heinrich Heine, whose books were among those torched in Nazi bonfires, famously wrote, Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people. There was resistance. During the Soviet and Nazi regimes, writers manuscripts were smuggled out of occupied countries and printed abroad. Despite the threat of arrest or even death, the illegal press flourished in occupied countries. Yet even in democracies censorship exists. Books that have been banned by libraries and school districts in the U.S. include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill a Mockingbird, Where the Wild Things Are, and Harry Potter. Many first world nations have a history of colonizing other countries, brutally stamping out indigenous languages and cultures. Journalists around the world face violent attacks. Much of the world s population lacks an independent press. All of these are forms of censorship. In the years after World War II, people asked how they could ensure that brutality on such a massive scale would never recur. The United Nations was formed, with fifty original member states, a number which would grow to 193. Led by Eleanor Roosevelt, a UN commission wrote the Universal 11
Zofia Posmysz: A Survivor s Story 7566. If you listen to the roll call of prisoners in Act One of The Passenger, you ll hear a series of numbers called over a loudspeaker (in German) by the overseer. 7566 is the number Zofia Posmysz was assigned in Auschwitz. At age ninety-one, she still bears the tattoo on her left arm. In 1942, Posymsz, an eighteen-year-old student in Krakow, was accused of distributing flyers for the Polish resistance and arrested. She would spend the next three years of her life in Nazi concentration camps, first Auschwitz and later Auschwitz-Birkenau (an extermination camp in the Auschwitz network), where she worked as a bookkeeper in the kitchen. In January 1945, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück camp and finally liberated that May. After the war, Posmysz studied literature and began working as a journalist. She signed her first article, on SS trials in Germany, with her Auschwitz identification number: 7566. (culture.pl) In 1959, on assignment in Paris, Posmysz was startled in the Place de la Concorde by what sounded like a familiar voice: that of Anneliese Franz, her female overseer at Birkenau. The incident inspired Posmysz s radio play, The Passenger in Cabin 45. She collaborated on the script for a film version of the story and then expanded the play into a novel, titled simply The Passenger. When the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich read the novel a few years later, he suggested to his friend and fellow composer Mieczysław Weinberg that it would make a great opera. Zofia Posmysz s identification photos from Auschwitz in 1942. She was 18 years old. A number of The Passenger s scenes and characters are based on Posmysz s experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau: the cramped barracks, the store room full of items stolen from prisoners, Marta s fiancé Tadeusz, and the overseer Anneliese Franz. Both characters are the namesakes of actual people whom Posmysz met at Auschwitz. In The Passenger, Tadeusz engraves a portrait of his beloved Marta on a silver medallion. Posmysz still wears a medallion given to her by a young Polish officer named Tadeusz Paulone who was executed in 1943. The real-life Annelise Franz managed the kitchen at Birkenau where Posmysz worked. I remember several moments when I felt she was not just a robot carrying out the sadistic wishes of murderers, Posmysz said of Franz, There was an element of good in her. (Duchen) She was always making sure that I was wearing clean clothes and clean laundry. Lice and fleas were very common, and so I think she did it for her own comfort, as well. (Barker) But what perhaps impressed Posmysz the most was Franz s response to Tadeusz Paulone s death. Franz called it, A shameful loss of a man. Ultimately, it was that human response, Posmysz said, that inspired her to write The Passenger. (Duchen) Posmysz continued to write about her experiences in Auschwitz, in both her fiction and in her memoirs, which she published in 1996. She served as consultant on the world stage premiere of The Passenger in Bregenz, Austria in 2010. I also used to think no words could express such an experience, 12
she said. But that s changed, because even if a hundredth of the truth is told, a fragment will live on in future generations. That is what we owe those who died there. (Ellis) photo: Sławomir Kamiłski Zofia Posmysz photo: Catherine Ashmore photo: Catherine Ashmore 13
Mieczysław Weinberg Musical Autobiographer Opera came naturally to Mieczysław Moishe (his nickname) Weinberg. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1919. His father was a conductor, composer, and violinist at the Yiddish theater, and his mother was an actress. When he was 10, Moishe began helping his father as a pianist, musical director, and composer. His skills came from a combination of natural talent and whatever he picked up from his father and his father s friends. Around the age of 12 he took his first formal piano lessons at the Warsaw Conservatory, and he eventually became a brilliant solo performer, accompanist, and chamber music player. Weinberg s experiences in World War II had a profound influence on the rest of his life. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, he and his sister headed east on foot! Her shoes were too tight, and she had to go back. Weinberg continued and escaped to Russia with the German invasion literally only minutes behind him. His parents and sister stayed in Warsaw and were sent to concentration camps where they were murdered. Thus, Weinberg become one of the greatest musical autobiographers of all time. In his own words: Many of my works are related to the theme of war. Not by choice: this was dictated by my fate, by the tragic fate of my relatives. It was my moral duty to write about the war, about the horrors that overwhelmed mankind in our [twentieth] century. Despite poor health he had a spinal infection that Photos of Weinberg provided by Tommy Persson Olga Rakhalskaya Mieczysław Moishe Weinberg gave him a hunched back, and he suffered from terrible digestion problems Weinberg continued his music career. He also became close friends with the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who encouraged him and promoted his work. Weinberg soon came under suspicion by the paranoid government of Joseph Stalin and his henchmen. Through a family connection with one of the Jewish physicians falsely accused in Stalin s phony Doctor s Plot, Weinberg was arrested and thrown into the dreaded Lubyanka Prison in Moscow in 1953. Fortunately, Stalin died in March that year and Weinberg was released. Unfortunately, he never again was completely free of government suspicion after these events. After all that he had suffered, it wouldn t have been surprising if Weinberg had just given up. But he had been saved time after time, and he felt his responsibility was to bear witness by continuing to compose. In the 76 years of his crowded and tumultuous life, he composed 26 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 6 concertos, 30 song cycles, and 7 operas, as well as dozens of ballets, cantatas, sonatas, music for films and plays, and even circuses. Composed in 1968, The Passenger is considered to be Weinberg s masterpiece, but when he died in 1996, the opera had never been produced. The Passenger is the finest chapter in his musical autobiography. 14
The Words to the Opera The script of an opera is called the libretto, and someone who writes a libretto is called a librettist. Alexander Medvedev, born in Moscow in 1927, is the librettist for The Passenger. Like Weinberg, Medvedev was part of the circle of artists who were close friends with Shostakovich. It was Shostakovich who first recognized what a great opera Zofia Posmysz s novel could be, and he suggested that Medvedev and Weinberg make the idea a reality. Medvedev gained Posmysz approval and even visited Auschwitz with her before setting to work on the original Russian libretto. (Lyric s production is in not just Russian, but also German, Polish, French, Yiddish, Czech, and English, depending on the nationality of the character singing). photo: Sergei Medvedev Alexander Medvedev The planned Moscow premiere in 1968 was canceled due to Soviet politics, and before Weinberg s death in 1996, Medvedev promised to listen for both of them if the work ever reached a stage. Sadly, Medvedev was too ill to attend when The Passenger finally premiered in Austria in 2010, and he died in Moscow just five days later. Fortunately, Zofia Posmysz WAS able to attend, so she listened for all three of them. photo: Catherine Ashmore 15
Music of Horror Music of Grace Hey people! That s exactly what this opera s first notes mean: Pay attention! It s not pretty music, but it gets the point across: This is going to be a tough story, so don t expect the music to be any different. The Holocaust showed the worst that human beings can do to each other. Just last year, an article in The New York Times put the latest numbers together, and came up with a list of the casualties: between 17 and 26 million Jews, gypsies, physically and mentally handicapped people, homosexuals, political prisoners, and prisoners of war were slaughtered in concentration and labor camps. (Lichtblau) Auschwitz, where much of The Passenger takes place, was just one of about 42,500 different facilities of every imaginable size and brutality. Zofia Posmysz, the woman on whom the character Marta is based, believed that words could not describe how anyone made it through even fifteen minutes of life in Auschwitz. The music of The Passenger helps describe these atrocities in ways that words alone cannot. In opera, words are made more powerful and more meaningful by music. So what kind of music do you write to deal with the Holocaust? Like a lot of opera composers, Weinberg devised a system of short motifs themes or melodies he connected with characters or situations. The first is the fanfare of timpani and snare drum that starts the opera. It sounds like a beating or shooting. You ll hear this motif again and again, especially in the next-to-last scene when the hero Tadeusz is about to meet his fate. Another excellent motif is a melody connected with Marta which occurs throughout the opera. Listen for it at the beginning of the Epilogue, where it is played very gently and clearly. In the Epilogue, Marta sits on a river bank, singing about her remarkable life, survival, and the need to remember. Photo: Karl Forster In addition to repeated motifs, Weinberg created musical atmospheres to highlight the mood or setting of a scene, like the jazzy/sleazy dance music on the ocean liner. In addition to a large (and often noisy) orchestra of heavy strings, winds, brass, and percussion, he used an on-stage dance band of accordion, guitar, piano, drums, and string bass. Liese and her husband Walter have a serious emotional disconnect because of the terrible secrets she s kept from him. Their melodies are nervous and not easy to remember. This creates its own atmosphere, played against the ship s fake elegance. No wonder Liese longs for the good old days, to the tune of trashy waltzes. Sometimes Weinberg doesn t let some of the characters sing at all, especially the sinister ones. The SS guards communicate in hard-edged speech, with dry, tinny, or violent accompaniments in the orchestra. In the Auschwitz barracks scenes, Weinberg used simple folk or folk-like songs to stress the different nationalities: Polish, French, Russian, and Czech. He also snuck in parodies of a German drinking song and a military march. In his music for the singers, Weinberg expresses excitement or terror in the 16
characters by writing very rapid runs of notes or with very high notes. You can hear those effects in the barracks scene of Act One, in the song of the French prisoner Yvette, and in the Old Woman s hysterical screaming. Weinberg was a shy, modest man. You might be surprised that the greatest and most emotional musical moment in The Passenger is not by Weinberg at all. When Tadeusz is ordered to perform a cheap waltz for an audience of SS officers, he instead gives them a gorgeous solo by Bach. Tadeusz pays for it with his life; yet great art wins the final victory Troops drinking beer during WWII. with Bach s beautiful music shining like a beam of light into the dark despair of Auschwitz. As ugly and terrifying as some of this music is, should it be any other way? Weinberg s great miracles are the moments when he lets the voices sing about human truths like love, terror, longing, and memory. Marta sings in the Epilogue, If the echo of their voices should fade, we shall perish. Just as Bach s art triumphs over the SS in the face of death, truth and beauty turn horror into grace. photo: Catherine Ashmore 17
Theater of Memory A month after her liberation, Zofia Posmysz returned to Auschwitz. She was accompanied by her mother, who wanted to see for herself where her daughter had been incarcerated. Horrified at the conditions, Posmysz s mother told her, You should never go back there. You should forget about it. (Grimes) Posmysz didn t take her mother s advice. In her 90s, she still speaks about her experience to people all over the world, including in Oświęcim, the town where Auschwitz is located. She s written plays, novels, and film scripts depicting life in a concentration camp. A major theme in The Passenger is memory and what lies hidden beneath the surface. The set itself evokes this theme. We begin on the deck of an ocean liner, a world awash in light, yet drained of color. Every detail, down to the characters period costumes, is white. It is the world of the conscious mind, the day-to-day reality of orange soda, waltzing, sunlight. As the story unfolds and Liese descends into memory, the diffuse light of the ship s deck gives way to blinding spotlights and shadows on the set s lower level. Below, in Auschwitz, things are murky, dirty, disordered in stark contrast with the pristine world above. Train tracks criss-cross the stage, a reminder of the human cargo brought to die at Auschwitz. The barracks is the center, the hub. It is, for its inmates, the whole world. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images President Barack Obama reflected in a wall in the Hall of Remembrance. The split-stage was the brainchild of the opera s librettist, Alexander Medvedev, whom the director, David Pountney, consulted when developing the production. He described to me his idea of the boat floating above, with staircases that go down into the hell of Auschwitz. (Duchen) Between these two worlds is the chorus. This ensemble of somber, suitclad men evokes a jury in a courtroom. There was a time when Posmysz wondered if the real-life Annelise Franz would Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting be brought to justice. If my guard appeared in court, she wondered, what would her defense be? And if I were called as a witness, what would I testify? (Grimes) In the world of The Passenger, the chorus acts as witness, judge, and jury in the trial of the fictional Anneliese Franz. Pountney noted, Medvedev saw the chorus as being like us. They are not portraying inmates at Auschwitz or people on the boat, but instead represent people looking back from a historical perspective and commenting. (Duchen) In classical drama, the chorus functioned in several ways. It offered background information to help the audience follow the performance as well as commentary on themes and motifs. Often, the chorus revealed what was hidden from the characters themselves. The Passenger chorus performs all of 18
these functions. It enjoins Liese to confess her secrets, it urges that everyone get a chance to speak so the truth may be known. The chorus tells the truth about Auschwitz: the gates only open inward. It lists the cities from which prisoners have been seized. At times, the chorus voices the fear and despair of those interned at the camp. The chorus is the last thing we hear before the epilogue and the tolling bell that signifies death. The collective voice of the chorus fades into silence, all the while urgently intoning, pitch black wall of death, letting the audience know that to survive Auschwitz is an extraordinary thing. It feels as if the audience, too, is being called to witness the pitch black wall of death, the magnitude of Auschwitz. We have heard the testimony. How will we respond to what we ve witnessed? Many years ago, Posmysz met with Weinberg in his Moscow apartment. The composer asked her question after question about life at Auschwitz. I can see him sitting in an armchair, with his eyes not looking at me, but looking far, far behind me, she said. Much later, I realized he was trying to reconstruct for himself a reality in which his beloveds lost their lives. (Ramey) The last word in The Passenger is given to Marta, who, as a young Polish prisoner, stands in for Posmysz. Reflecting at the river s edge, she makes a promise to her beloveds who lost their lives, vowing, I will never forget. Holocaust memorial in Miami, FL photo: Catherine Ashmore 19
Auschwitz Much of The Passenger is set in Auschwitz, the largest of all the Nazi concentration camps. The opera s Auschwitz scenes take place in the lower section of the stage, in an area encircled and transected by train tracks. It s a fitting representation: Auschwitz s location, nearly dead center of Germanoccupied Poland, and its proximity to train lines, made it the ideal place for the Nazis to implement the Final Solution, their attempt to murder every Jew living in Europe. Trains arrived daily, carrying prisoners packed into freight cars without food or water. Many died during the journey from exposure, illness, and hunger. When a train arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the selections began. Those deemed unable to work by the SS physicians the old, the sick, pregnant women, and children were sent to the gas chambers at once. Those considered healthy enough for work were registered, tattooed with a serial number, stripped, deloused, shaved, and used as slave labor. Only a fraction of Jewish prisoners were registered and tattooed; most were killed upon arrival. Although Jews account for the largest number of those murdered, others were imprisoned and killed as well, including thousands of non-jewish Poles, Roma and Sinti peoples, and Soviet POWs. Auschwitz didn t start out as a death camp. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and its western territories including the town of Oświęcim, the site of Auschwitz became part of the Third Reich. Auschwitz was built in Oświęcim as a prison camp for Polish political prisoners. Conditions were terrible; prisoners were treated as slave labor and thousands died within the first two years. In 1941, Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS and one of the most powerful men in the Nazi party, had briefed the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, about the so-called Final Solution. A year later, Auschwitz had Gate to Auschwitz reads Arbeit Macht Frei, or Work Will Free You. become the largest and most deadly of the Nazi camps and served three distinct functions: It was a complex of slave labor camps, a concentration camp, and a death camp. Prisoners at Auschwitz II, also known as Auschwitz- Birkenau, were killed in gas chambers as well as through starvation, forced labor, disease, shooting squads, and medical experiments. The gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were opened in March 1943. When the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, they found only around 7,000 survivors, as well as warehouses containing clothing, shoes, toothbrushes, suitcases, and other personal items that had belonged to the victims. The SS had evacuated the camps, destroyed records, and blown up the gas chambers in an effort to conceal the evidence of mass murder and other crimes. In total more than a million people were killed at Auschwitz, more than ninety percent of whom were Jewish. January 27, 2015 marks the 70th commemoration of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz. Each year this date is recognized as the International Day of Holocaust Remembrance. 20
Prisoners at Auschwitz Marta, Polish Marta is the character most similar to the author of the novel The Passenger on which the opera was based. Zofia Posmysz was an eighteen year old Roman Catholic Polish student when she was arrested and imprisoned at Auschwitz. Where have you all arrived from? Where? Krzystina, Act I, Scene 3 Train tracks leading to the front doors of Auschwitz. Yvette, French Over 4,000 French political prisoners were sent to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944. (Piper) Tadeusz, Polish Krzystina, Polish All skilled workers of Polish background are to be used in our war industry. Afterwards, Poles will disappear from the world. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS An estimated 130,000 Poles were sent to Auschwitz. Approximately 10,000 Poles were killed without ever being registered as prisoners. An estimated half of those imprisoned died due to starvation, beating, sickness, excessive labor, failure to receive medical care, and execution. (Piper) Katya, Russian partisan A Russian partisan was a member of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II. Vlasta, Czech It s estimated that at least 10,000 Czech political prisoners were deported to Auschwitz, the majority of whom were ethnically Czech. The others were Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and Germans who were Czechoslovak citizens before the war. More than half of the Czech political prisoners died in Auschwitz. (Piper) Hannah, Greek Jew The Greek city of Salonika was Europe s largest Sephardic Jewish center until the Holocaust. Between March and August 1943, the Germans deported more than 45,000 Jews from Salonika to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most went to the gas chambers on arrival. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) 21 Auschwitz Personnel SS Over 7,000 SS personnel served at Auschwitz during the war. The SS were Hitler s vision of a master race. Chosen to implement the Nazi Final Solution, the SS led the killing, torture, and enslavement of millions of people. After the war, fewer than 800 SS who served at Auschwitz were tried for war crimes. Women like Anneliese Franz began to be posted to Auschwitz in 1942, due in part to the creation of the women s camp, but also because of personnel shortfalls caused by the assignment of SS men to the eastern front. Kommandant The commander of a concentration camp. The first kommandant of Auschwitz was SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss. Kapo A Kapo was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks in the camp. In return, they might receive slightly better living conditions or other rewards. The Kapos kept costs low by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system also turned victim against victim; Kapos were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. Kommando A Kommando was the basic unit of organization of slave laborers in German concentration camps.
Music in Hell In the climactic moment of The Passenger, Marta s fiancé, Tadeusz, defies the Nazis by playing Bach s Chaconne in D minor for solo violin instead of the Kommandant s favorite waltz. As Tadeusz is dragged off his violin smashed the opera orchestra takes over his performance. It s a symbolic moment. One man is silenced; but the music goes on. In The Passenger, music is witness, memory, and resistance. It is what cannot be broken, it is what remains. Music was all of these things in the death camps. Many camps, including Auschwitz, had official orchestras, both large and small, made up of amateur as well as professional musicians. Maintaining a prisoner orchestra was a sign of prestige for a camp Kommandant. Except in the case of Birkenau, which had a women s orchestra, all of the groups were composed exclusively of men. Posmysz remembered the women s orchestra at Birkenau which included the violinist Alma Rosé, niece of composer Gustav Mahler playing during the selection of a fresh transport of prisoners: It was of course a great lie, being received by music, not knowing that in 45 minutes they would be gone. (Ramey) Posmysz described the music she heard in the camp: Bach was not played, his music was not allowed. All we heard were operettas, over and over again, especially Johann Strauss. I turn off the radio, whenever I hear his music, I can t stand it It was in Auschwitz that I got to know some masterpieces, like the famous quartet from Rigoletto. I was a strong girl, yet I remember how this music made me cry. (Ross) Another Birkenau survivor, Erika Rothschild, recalled that the band played Polish, Czech, or Hungarian folk music during selections, depending on where the new prisoners were from. (Music and the Holocaust) The prisoner s orchestra is forced to play as they lead an inmate to his death. Another of the orchestras tasks was to accompany prisoners marching to and from work rain or shine. Music helped move things along; it kept exhausted prisoners on their feet and moving in unison. For similar reasons of efficiency and intimidation, the SS often forced prisoners to sing. Eberhard Schmidt, who was incarcerated at Sachsenhausen, remembered, Anyone who did not know the song was beaten. Anyone who sang too softly was beaten. Anyone who sang too loud was beaten. The SS men lashed out wildly. (Fackler) But some inmates found ways of resisting. Survivor Haguel Leon of Salonika described how prisoners changed the words of Nazi-approved songs to convey messages of hope and encouragement in their native tongues. Auschwitz survivor Beri Nehemia remembers a Greek voice ringing out across camp one day from oven number six: Greek girls who can hear me, tra la la In these chimneys here that you see above, a death factory of the worst kind is operating. Thousands of Jews falling into flames, and I know that I too will be burned. Greek girls, please, if you come out of here alive, tell the world. (Aini) 22
large head Musicians were also called upon to play unofficial performances for camp personnel. Helena Dunicz-Niwinska, a violinist in the women s orchestra at Birkenau, recalls being commanded to assemble for an evening performance in the guardhouse when the connoisseurs among the SS-ranks, arriving after the selection, listened to works by Grieg, Schumann, and Mozart, in order to relax. (Fackler) Musicians who played in camp orchestras or bands were usually part of a special Kommando. They shared quarters and enjoyed certain privileges with regard to housing, forced labor, and rations in comparison with other prisoners. Yet they were essentially musical slaves to the SS and could be disposed of at any time. Small, informal bands sometimes played for fellow prisoners. Members of the camp band in Auschwitz formed a jazz combo led by Dutch trumpeter Lex van Weren, who recalled, We went to various barracks and then played for the other prisoners. We received bread, wurst, and jam from the prominent prisoners and sometimes we also got cigarettes, which we could exchange for other items. (Fackler) Album cover for Coco Schuman, holocaust survivor and jazz musician. Coco Schumann, a jazz musician who would later play with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, was saved from the gas chamber at Auschwitz because a guard recognized him from Berlin s jazz scene and placed him in a Roma musical group. Schumann recalled later that, The images that I saw every day were impossible to live with, and yet we held on. We played music to them, for our basic survival. We made music in hell. (Music and the Holocaust) It s incredible to think that music could endure in the face of such horror and deprivation. That it did is a testament to the imprisoned musicians strength and the power of music to move the human spirit. 23
For Further Investigation Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State. pbs.org The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. chgs.umn.edu Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, by Filip Müller, Ivan R. Dee, 1979. Mieczyslaw Weinberg: In Search of Freedom, by David Fanning, Wolke Verlag, 2010. Music and the Holocaust. holocaustmusic.ort.org United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ushmm.org Works Cited Aini, Leah. No Other Jews like Them. haaretz.com. August 12, 2010. Auschwitz. Music and the Holocaust. holocaustmusic.ort.org. Barker, Vicki. Reviving A Forgotten Operatic Masterpiece Of The Holocaust. npr.org. All Things Considered: October 24, 2011. Birkenau. Music and the Holocaust. holocaustmusic.ort.org. Duchen, Jessica. A Chorus Straight from Auschwitz. independent.co.uk. September 16, 2011. Duchen, Jessica. It s Auschwitz the Opera. The Jewish Chronicle Online. thejc.com. September 22, 2011. Ellis, Vernon. An Opera for Auschwitz. theguardian.com. October 17, 2011. Fackler, Guido. Music in Concentration Camps 1933 1945. Music and Politics. music.ucsb.edu. 2007. Fackler, Guido. Official Camp Orchestras in Auschwitz. Music and the Holocaust. holocaustmusic.ort.org. Gould, J.J. Josef Skvorecky on the Nazis Control-Freak Hatred of Jazz. theatlantic.com. January 3, 2012. 24 Grimes, William. Haunted by History, but Gifted in Sharing It: Zofia Posmysz s Personal Pain Is Behind The Passenger. nytimes.com. July 9, 2014. Lichtblau, Eric. The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking. nytimes.com. March 1, 2013. Piętka, Bohdan. The SS garrison in Auschwitz. Memorial Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. en.auschwitz.org. Piper, Franciszek. Other Ethnic Groups. Memorial Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. en.auschwitz.org. June 10, 2008. Piper, Franciszek. Poles in Auschwitz. Memorial Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. en.auschwitz.org. Ramey, Corinne. The Passenger Makes Its New York Debut at Park Avenue Armory. wsj.com. July 8, 2014. Ross, Alex. Memories of Music at Auschwitz. newyorker.com. August 29, 2011. United States Holocaust Museum. Salonika. Holocaust Encyclopedia. ushmm.org. Weiwei, Ai. On Self-Censorship. huffingtonpost.com. June 19, 2014. Zofia Posmysz. culture.pl. Adam Mickiewicz Institute. July 25, 2014.