July 7 –August 16, 2014 Lincoln Center Festival is sponsored by American Express July 10 –13 Park Avenue Armory Houston Grand Opera The Passenger Opera in two acts Music Mieczyslaw Weinberg Libretto by Alexander Medvedev English Translation David Pountney Based on the novel by Zofia Posmysz Conductor Patrick Summers Lighting Designer Fabrice Kebour Director David Pountney Sound Designer Mark Grey Associate Director Rob Kearley Fight Director Leraldo Anzaldúa Set Designer Johan Engels Movement Director Courtney D. Jones Costume Designer Marie-Jeanne Lecca Chorus Master Richard Bado Approximate performance time: 3 hours, including 1 intermission Co-presented by Lincoln Center Festival and Park Avenue Armory The Lincoln Center Festival 2014 presentation of The Passenger is made possible in part by generous support from the Polska Music Program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Robert and Helen Appel, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Larry A. and Klara Silverstein, Judy and Michael Steinhardt, Nancy & Morris W. Offit, and one anonymous donor. Additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Major support for Lincoln Center Festival 2014 is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center Festival 2014 is made possible in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts. The Passenger is a co-production of Bregenzer Festspiele, Teatr Wielki, English National Opera, and Teatro Real. Houston Grand Opera’s performances of The Passenger in New York are generously underwritten by Bill and Sara Morgan, and Amanda and Morris Gelb. Additional support provided by Robin Angly & Miles Smith, Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, Greater Houston Partnership, Joyce Z. Greenberg, Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, Houston First Corporation, Houston Methodist, Schlumberger Oilfield Services, Rhonda and Donald Sweeney, Phoebe and Bobby Tudor, and Nina and Michael Zilkha. LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014 Cast (in order of vocal appearance) Walter, Liese’s husband, German diplomat, age 50 Joseph Kaiser Liese, German, on the ship age 37/in Auschwitz age 22 Michelle Breedt Steward/Elderly Passenger James Maddalena Senior Overseer/Capo in the female barracks Cheryl Parrish First SS Officer Robert Pomakov Second SS Officer Peixin Chen Third SS Officer Kevin Ray Marta, Polish, on the ship age 34/prisoner in Auschwitz age 19 Melody Moore Old Woman, prisoner Victoria Livengood Ivette, French, prisoner age 15 Uliana Alexyuk Vlasta, Czech, prisoner age 20 Carolyn Sproule Krystyna, Polish, prisoner age 28 Natalya Romaniw Bronka, older prisoner age 50 Kathryn Day Hannah, Jewish, prisoner age 18 Agnieszka Rehlis Katya, a Russian partisan, prisoner age 21 Kelly Kaduce Tadeusz, Marta’s fiancé, prisoner age 25 Morgan Smith Sung in English with projected titles LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014 Synopsis Aboard an ocean liner bound for Brazil in the early 1960s and inside the Auschwitz concen - tration camp during World War II. ACT I A German diplomat, Walter, and his wife, Liese, are on their way to Brazil where he will take up a diplomatic post. Suddenly, Liese sees a woman, a fellow passenger whom she thinks she recognizes, although Liese had thought her dead. Shocked by the encounter, she reveals to her husband for the first time that she was an SS Overseer at Auschwitz. This rev - elation causes a crisis for both of them. The action goes back in time to the camp, where we discover the mysterious passenger seen on the ocean liner is Marta, a Polish prisoner whom Liese, the overseer, has identi - fied as someone who can help control the other prisoners. In the women’s barracks there are prisoners from every corner of Europe. A suspected Russian partisan, Katya, is brought in from a brutal interrogation, and the capo finds a note in Polish that may impli - cate her with communicating with an outside partisan group. Liese orders Marta to read it, and Marta coolly pretends it is a love letter to her own fiancé, Tadeusz, who she believes is also a prisoner. Back on the boat, Liese and Walter try to come to terms with this information, which now hangs over their lives together. Intermission ACT II Under Liese’s supervision, the women are sorting belongings looted from the prisoners. An officer arrives demanding a violin. The commandant has ordered a concert at which one of the prisoners will be made to play the commandant’s favorite waltz. Liese produces a vio - lin, but the officer says he will send the prisoner himself to collect it. The prisoner is Tadeusz, Marta’s fiancé. He and Marta have a few moments together before Liese interrupts them. She allows them to remain together, hoping to capitalize on this act of kindness later. Liese seeks Tadeusz out in the workshop where he produces silver ornaments to order for the SS officers. One is a Madonna, whose face Liese recognizes as Marta’s. Liese offers Tadeusz the chance to meet Marta, but Tadeusz refuses, not wanting to be in Liese’s debt. In the women’s barracks, it is Marta’s birthday. She sings a song about being in love with death. Liese interrupts and tries to goad Marta by telling her that Tadeusz turned down a chance to see her. Marta remains unmoved, saying if that is what Tadeusz decided, he was right to do so. Yvette tries to teach French to an old Russian woman and Katya sings about Russia. Suddenly guards burst in; it is time for “selection.” A list of numbers is announced and, one by one, various prisoners are taken away. Liese tells Marta that it is not yet her turn; she will arrange for her to witness Tadeusz’s concert. LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014 Back on the boat, Liese and Walter have come to a new understanding: even if the “pas - senger ” really is Marta, they are determined to put a brave face on it and decide to join the dancing in the salon. Liese is, however, horrified when the figure approaches the band, apparently to make a request, and they start to play the commandant’s waltz, the same one Tadeusz was to play in the camp. It is time for the concert at the camp and all the officers and prisoners are assembled. Tadeusz does not play the waltz he was told to perform, but instead plays Bach’s sublime Chaconne. In the uproar that follows, his violin is smashed and he is dragged off to the death cells. Marta is alone with her memories and the longing that all who suffered should not be forgotten. —David Pountney landed in Tashkent, which was a major evac - Note from the Director uation destination for the Soviet artistic In 1939 a young pianist was sitting in his intelligentsia. There he married Natalya Vovsi mother’s kitchen in Warsaw, when he heard Michoels, the daughter of Solomon Michoels, over the radio the news of the German inva - a famous actor and director of the Moscow- sion of Poland. He immediately set off on based Yiddish Theatre for which Chagall had foot with his sister, who sadly had inade quate created his legendary murals. When Mich- shoes and had to turn back. That was the oels brought the score of Weinberg’s first last time he saw any member of his family. symphony to Dmitri Shostakovich, it was the start of a lasting and intimate friendship. It soon became apparent that he was not in front of the invading German troops, but in Through this intervention, Weinberg received the middle. He tried to get a place on a permission to move to Moscow. passing horse-drawn wagon, but was out - bid by wealthier walkers. Two kilometers far - Although Weinberg now had a direct link to ther, he passed the wagon lying in a ditch, the top echelons of Soviet intelligentsia, the passengers massacred from the air. things did not run smoothly for long. In 1948 Solomon Michoels was murdered (in a “car When he finally reached the Russian border, accident ”) by Stalin’s secret police, the the Soviet guard asked his name: “Mieczy- NKVD, and this was the opening salvo of slaw Weinberg.” “ Are you Jewish? ” “ Yes! ” semi-official Soviet anti-Semitism—in which “You are Moshe ”— and the rubber stamp “cosmopolitan ” was the deadly code-word thudded into his papers. With that nonchalant for “Jewish.” Weinberg was not only a for - bureaucratic “thump-thump ” Weinberg lost eigner and Jewish, but also now carried the not only his entire family, but his country and fatal stigma of having acquired the wrong his name. Moshe Vainberg (sic) would need relatives. From 1948 on, Weinberg was 30 years of relentless toil to regain his name; under daily surveillance and was arrested in his family and his country were lost forever. 1953—a torturous wait of five years before the inevitable knock on the door. The charge Weinberg continued his studies at the con - was “making propaganda for the establish - servatory in Minsk before again being ment of a Jewish State in the Crimea.” But obliged to flee the German invasion of the this delay was his luck: a month later Stalin Soviet Union. This time his luck was in. He was dead, and Shostakovich, who had signed LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014 a document promising to raise Weinberg’s miraculously survived for three years. She daughter if both parents were taken, was had the immense good luck to be taken in to instead able to secure Weinberg’s release. work in the kitchens and subsequently became the bookkeeper responsible to the Weinberg was now free to compose, and it SS overseer, Aufseherin Anne-Liese Franz.