The Passenger

David Pountney directs the UK premiere of Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 1968 opera. Based upon a semi-autobiographical novel by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz, 'The Passenger' was effectively banned in the USSR and only finally received its triumphant stage premiere at last year's Bregenz Festival. It tells of an encounter between two women– one a former Auschwitz guard, the other a former prisoner – that plunges them both back into the horrors of the Holocaust. Sir Richard Armstrong conducts this long-suppressed work by a composer whose music has been characterised as 'Shostakovich with a Jewish accent'.