The Passenger at Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa, Moniuszko Auditorium

Act I

The early 1960s, on an ocean liner. Watching over the scene is a chorus who sometimes take part as prisoners, passengers or officers, and sometimes are merely onlookers from another time, as are we.

Scene one

A German diplomat, Walter, and his young wife, Lisa, are on the way to Brazil where he will take up a diplomatic post. Suddenly, she sees a fellow passenger who she thinks she recognises, except that she knows that person to be dead. Under the shock of this encounter, she reveals to her husband for the first time that she was an SS overseer in Auschwitz. The revelation is a crisis for both of them.

Scene two

In the camp, we learn that the Passenger is Martha, a Polish prisoner who Lisa Franz, the overseer, has marked out as someone who could help control the other prisoners.

Scene three

In the female barracks, we meet women from every corner of Europe brought together in this cosmopolitan hell. A suspected Russian partisan, Katia arrives from a brutal interrogation, and the Kapo finds a note in Polish which may implicate her. Lisa orders Martha to read it, and Martha coolly renders it as a love letter – as if to her own fiancée, Tadeusz, who she believes is also a prisoner. Back on the boat, Lisa and Walter try to come to terms with this new background to their relationship.