The Passenger by Mieczyslaw Weinberg

An encounter between two women – one a former Auschwitz guard, the other a former prisoner – plunges them both back into the horrors of the Holocaust, pitting perpetrator against victim in a moral battle between guilt and denial, retribution and absolution.

Based upon a semi-autobiographical novel by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz, Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s 1968 opera The Passenger was effectively banned in the USSR and only finally received its triumphant stage premiere at last year’s Bregenz Festival, 14 years after Weinberg’s death. Hailed as ‘a work that demands and deserves to be seen’ (Opera), this 20th century masterpiece, by a composer whose music has been characterised as ‘Shostakovich with a Jewish accent’, now comes to ENO in David Pountney’s shatteringly intense staging, conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong.