Zofia Posmysz at the NY premiere of The Passenger at Lincoln Center Festival-New York

The Polish Cultural Institute New York is proud to welcome Zofia Posmysz to New York for performances of The Passenger and panel discussions

ZOFIA POSMYSZ The Passenger and panel discussions

Lincoln Center Festival, New York, NY

The Passenger, Mieczyslaw Weinberg's uncompromising 1968 opera about the Holocaust, set to a libretto by Alexander Medvedev and based on the book The Passenger by Polish writer and concentration camp survivor Zofia Posmysz, will have its New York premiere, in a co-production with Lincoln Center Festival and Park Avenue Armory.

Set in the late 1950s aboard a cruise ship,The Passenger tells the story of Lise, a former SS officer, and her husband Walter. Lise believes she recognizes one of the prisoners she oversaw at Auschwitz, a Polish woman called Marta, among their fellow-passengers. These scenes on the luxury liner are justaposed with flashbacks to the dark underworld where Lise once wielded control. Lise is never able to confirm whether the woman really is Marta, and Weinberg's opera makes no attempt at closure or reconciliation. Instead the harsh and complex realities of the mass murder Lise helped perpetrate, and her inescapable guilt, are unsparingly confronted.

The Lincoln Center Festival 2014 presentation of ARC Ensemble is made possible in part by generous support from the Polska Music Program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw.

Lincoln Center Festival gratefully acknowledges the Polish Cultural Institute New York for its support in bringing Zofia Posmysz to New York City for the performances of The Passenger.

The Passenger is co-presented by Lincoln Center Festival and Park Avenue Armory.

The Lincoln Center Festival 2014 presentation of The Passenger is made possible in part by generous support from the Polska Music Program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, Robert and Helen Appel, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Larry A. and Klara Silverstein, Judy and Michael Steinhardt, Nancy & Morris W. Offit, and One Anonymous.

Additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Passenger is a co-production of Bregenzer Festispiele, Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa, English National Opera and Teatro Real.

Lincoln Center Festival gratefully acknowledges the Kosciuszko Foundation for its grant toward covering the cost of translating chosen excerpts from The Passenger.