The Passenger Tickets

The opera is a remarkable rendition of Posmysz’s novel and is studded with beautiful music and impressive sets. The two levels of opera used for performance will leave you spellbound as you witness the most outstanding actors recreate the cruelties that followed the Second World War. The play was to be performed at the Bolshoi in the 1960s but the initiative was not followed through. It was banned in the USSR because of its strong opposing stance to the Nazi regime. Later on, the Opera only commenced in its full version in 2006. The English National Opera has now provided a medium for The Passenger to be performed with its full grandeur and majesty.

The play is set in the era after the Second World War where a newly designated diplomat, Walter is sailing towards Brazil on the deck on an ocean liner. This is the first level of performance of the Opera. Here, the diplomat Walter’s new wife spots a Polish woman on the deck. She recognizes that the woman, called Marta was an inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was a guard. Walter has no inkling of Lisa’s prior occupation. The second level of performance shows Auschwitz. Here, Lisa discloses her past to Walter. While she recounts wartime, she is faced with a number of realities. She plots easily managing the inmates with her superior and is of the view that they should be manipulated and one potential leader should be picked out of each group to lead the rest. There is a general indifference among the guards towards the gassing of the prisoners. For them it is better to stay here and not die on the battlefront against Russians. Their complete apathy towards the well being of the prisoners is highly tragic as the play moves towards further prejudices of the guards.

Level two is a bleak representation of how the Second World War treated the masses. The startling intensity with which the inmates were tortured and persecuted is shown to the audience. This will leave you dumbfounded as the picture painted by Weinberg is gruesome and not very far from reality. There is a dreadful depiction of how inhumanely the inmates are treated that will move the audience.

On a personal level too, Lisa is unjust with Marta. As Marta tricks Lisa and misreads a Russian woman’s note that is being tortured and thrashed because of that very note. Later on, Lisa is witness to Marta and her lover, she decides to try and manipulate their relationship to exert more control on the prisoners. She also taunts Marta and tries to get her to believe that her lover is to die. In a gruesome attempt at throwing Bach’s Chaconne at his Kommandant, Marta’s lover does die and Lisa is faced with feelings of guilt and remorse which she cannot let go of. The play’s resolution is insoluble as we see Lisa in despair and without a set path.

The striking opera will bring you to empathize with history. The crowd will be urged to experience a number of emotions. Marta’s dreadful redemption will be acted out to you in an interesting and sentimentally charged manner.  It is problematic to have an opera based on the Holocaust as reactions become uncontrollable. Weinberg effectively portrays the two levels on the operatic stage. The themes portrayed were highly objectionable in the past but now theater companies have the freedom of art to communicate these ideas to the audience. Lisa and Walter’s predicament as she recollects her past will be scarring to hear through melodies that will make your heart ache. If you are a theater fan in general and an opera fan in particular, you do not want to miss the opportunity of being part of the unreal experience. To get a taste of the thematically rich play, get The Passenger tickets .