Título: Die Passagierin (1968) de Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Interpreters: A. Majeski, D. Karanas, N. Schukoff, G. Orendt, A. Gorbachyova-Ogilvie, L. Vinyas-Curtis, M. Fontanals-Simmons, N. Karyazina, O. Doray, H. Field, L.S. Sokolova,G. Danby , G. Du-lex , H. Saemundsson , M. Bakonyi , A. Casals . Orchestra and choir Theater Royal.
Choir direction: J. L. Basso.
Dirección musical: M. Gražinytè-Tyla
Stage direction: D. Pountney.
New Production: Teatro Real, Bregenz Festival, Teatr Wileki and the ENO.
Date: 1/III/2024
Historical justice and the vindication of a composer who cannot be forgotten came together in the exciting premiere in Spain of the opera Die Passagerin (1968), by the Polish-Russian composer, of Jewish origin, Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Warsaw, 1919- Moscow, 1996).
The Teatro Real, after the national premiere of the opera Lear by A. Reinmann, once again sets the pace of current national lyrical quality with the premiere in Spain of this title by a composer unknown to the vast majority.
A magnificent production, signed by David Pountney, the same one who brought this masterpiece out of oblivion and which had its world premiere at the Breguenz Festival in 2010, can be seen in eight performances, until March 24, at the Teatro Real in Madrid .
Weinberg, a forgotten composer in the shadow of his friend and protector Dmitri Shostakovich, vindicates himself with this, his first of seven operas, which he was never able to premiere during his lifetime.
With marvelous orchestration, rich, complex, timbrally brilliant, and sumptuous originality and imagination, his music contains echoes of the Russian school, in addition to Shostakovich, the spirit of Prokofiev, but also with shades of the personality of Britten or Janaceck.
Weinberg exposes a fascinating personal universe, of a morbid writing, with its own profound musical temperament, where the mixture of Yiddish music, a personal and redundant rhythm, typical of the Russian school, and a fluid vocal writing, very demanding in her tessitura, especially for the soprano in the character of Marta, and for the tenor as her husband Walter, which shows that she is in the presence of a musical personality at the level of all the established names mentioned above.
It is surprising that a topic so covered in cinema, such as the Holocaust, has been treated so little in opera. With The Passenger, Weinberg achieves a before and after for opera in this sense.
The translation of his own personal experiences, as a Pole who fled from Nazism, as a nationalized Russian but with the stigma of being a Jew in no man’s land, is poured into a score that exudes truth, and that uses music where words remain. short.
Pountney’s production, with its two sets, the one with the ship at the top, and the one that recreates the Auschwitz concentration camp at the foot of the stage, are managed with great intelligence and functionality.
The treatment of the characters, the lighting and the costumes, refer to the cinematographic memory of a sensory and reflective music, where the memory is present in a libretto, signed by Sofia Posmysz (a survivor of Auschwitz), which combines guilt, past and regrets like a present and constant hell.
The cast seems impeccable, with the vocal lead role of Amanda Majeski, dedicated to the ghostly and metaphorical character of The Passenger (Marta), victim of Lisa, the SS jailer played with unblemished truth by the mezzo Daveda Karanas.
Majeski touches the limits of his instrument, with metallic echoes that sharpen his character’s suffering. Beside him, he displayed the diabolical mastery of his instrument, the tenor Nikolai
Schukoff, as Walter, the husband who discovers his Nazi wife’s past. with an unforgiving voice that recalls the tenor demands of Richard Strauss’s roles.
The Tadeusz of the Hungarian baritone Gyula Orendt, who together with Majeski starred in the wonderful love duo of the second act, of shocking sensitivity, is timbrally smooth and clearly expressive.
Among the captives, the Russian Anna Gorbachyova-Ogilvie stood out, with an oni-rich and chilling a cappella solo, as well as the versatile and captivating Marta Fontanals-Simmons (Vlasta), Lidia Vinyes-Curtis (Kryzystyna), Olivia Doray (Yvette) or Nadezhda Karyazina’s Hannah.
Hypnotic is the Intemezzo choir, especially in its male section sung in Spanish, as a mirror of the spectator attending the performance.
Finally, great work to the pit by director Mirga Gražinytè-Tyla, in her debut in Spain with her first opera as the main baton. The Lithuanian, a lover of Weinberg’s work, focused on the colors, nuances and dynamics, with a proverbial use of tempo for a score that seems to leave a story in limbo where the past and the present merge.
The Madrid Symphony Orchestra responded with the quality of a set of flexible and pointed sound, brass and strikingly forceful percussion, from which only a tighter volume control could be asked for the vocal balance of the protagonists.
The journey proposed by The Passenger is an existential journey where music fuses the unspeakable, where the time and space of a historical memory of horrendous memory is transformed before the eyes of the viewer into a subjugating work that knocks out and gives chills.
Once again the achievement of an aesthetic experience in the form of music and words, an ideal that opera has always sought and that Weinberg responds to us with a lyrical voice that is impossible to forget.
