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Guilt, Lies, Courage, Love: THE PASSENGER, Lyric Opera of Chicago on WRTI, June 27, 1 PM

There’s no escaping your past. Aboard an ocean liner in the early 1960s, a West German diplomat, Walter, and his wife Liese are bound for a new posting in Brazil.

But unbeknownst to her husband, Liese served as an SS officer in Auschwitz. Haunted by her past, she is stunned when she thinks she recognizes a fellow passenger; is it really Marta, her former prisoner?

Music of beauty and enormity... a perfect masterpiece... a hymn to humanity... to those who stood up against fascism.--Dmitri Shostakovich

Suppressed for more than 40 years, Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s gripping opera The Passenger has emerged anew, electrifying audiences at Austria’s Bregenz Festival and again in Warsaw and London. The action moves between two realms—from the pristine white deck of a luxury liner above to the dark horrors of the death camp below.

The critics are calling it “heartstoppingly beautiful”:

Guilt and denial, lies and truth, fear and courage, and love—it’s all here in an artistic and emotional experience you'll never forget.

Synopsis and detailed program guide with cast info

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: THE PASSENGER

Libretto: Alexander Medvedev (in Russian, German, Polish, French, Yiddish, Czech, and English)

CAST:
Marta: Amanda Majeski
Liese: Daveda Karanas
Walter: Brandon Jovanovichi
Tadeusz: Joshua Hopkins
Katya: Kelly Kaduce

CONDUCTOR: Sir Andrew Davis
STAGE DIRECTOR: David Pountney
CHORUS: Lyric Opera Chorus
CHORUS MASTER: Michael Black