The Passenger by Weinberg, From (2024/2024), Directed by Tobias Kratzer, Conductor Vladimir Jurowski, Azim Karimov, Nationaltheater, Munich, Germany

There is no statute of limitations on murder. Neither does guilt. Lisa, an SS guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, is confronted with the perpetrator role of her youth in old age. On a boat trip, she believes she recognises Marta in a passenger, a prisoner she perfidiously oppressed in the concentration camp. The past, which she has so meticulously tried to suppress over the years, forces its way back into her consciousness. The two-act opera by Mieczysław Weinberg was composed in 1968; Weinberg's parents and sister perished in the Trawniki concentration camp. The libretto was based on the story by Zofia Posmysz. She was a Polish resistance fighter, editor and author. She was interned in Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945 and was liberated in the Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp. Posmysz, who was involved in several memorial and educational organisations until the end, died in a hospice in Oświęcim in 2022, just two weeks before her 99th birthday. The new Munich production is the first production since her death. Die Passagierin revolves around the themes of memory and guilt from a contemporary perspective.