As of: March 7, 2024, 3:11 p.m
By: Markus Thiel
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“A negative figure becomes understandable”: Lisa (Sophie Koch) was a concentration camp guard and encounters her past many years later.
© Wilfried Hösl
Although Mieczyslaw Weinberg completed “The Passenger” in 1968, the staged premiere was only in Bregenz in 2010.
Since then, many theaters have re-enacted the two-act play, which deals with the Shoah in an unusual way (plot at the end of the interview) and is based on an autobiographical novel by Zofia Posmysz.
Tobias scratch is now directing this opera at the Bavarian State Opera.
Director Tobias scratch will become artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera in 2025.
© Georg Wendt
Can and should the Holocaust be brought onto the stage? And how do you avoid the danger of this becoming a TV documentary à la Guido Knopp, which is fascinated by everything?
It's really one of the pieces that I spent the longest time deciding whether to accept.
Precisely because your questions are intrinsic to the work here.
Every time I watched “The Passenger,” I felt uneasy.
Not because it was a bad opera, but because the depiction of the imprisoned women with pasted-on bald heads and striped jackets was not acceptable to me.
So far, the performances have always been legitimized by the real presence of Zofia Posmysz, which was usually shown on stage in the applause at the premiere.
So there is this dichotomy: How do you represent the Holocaust, which cannot actually be depicted?
And how do you deal with this immensely important topic?
The special thing about the piece is that it also arouses sympathy for a perpetrator. The trick is not that rare; just think of the current film “Zone of Interest” about the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß. How do you deal with this ambiguity?
I think this is very important because it avoids the danger of slipping into a commemorative routine.
The latter is not fundamentally bad.
Remembrance must and needs to be practiced.
But here the audience is involved in paradoxical questions.
One asks where and how such a negative figure becomes comprehensible.
You could even find yourself feeling more affected by the fate of an old German than that of the victims.
A very dangerous terrain.
But it's not the slightest bit of genius in this piece that a victim dares to undertake the thought experiment of essentially slipping into the head of a perpetrator.
“The Passenger” also has an incredibly melodramatic element.
Conductor Vladimir Jurowski and I agreed very early on not to overemphasize this.
There is now a line version that summarizes some of the sentimentality in the camp a little more succinctly.
In this way we go back more to Zofia Posmysz's novel, which puts the perspective on the ship more in the foreground.
And to come back to your Guido Knopp aspect: In this piece there is a connection between historical truthfulness and extreme aesthetic distance.
And that's not what Knopp does.
Nevertheless, and this is meant very objectively, there are very catchy, almost culinary aspects in “Passenger”. This is the case in music, for example, when Bach is quoted in an almost pathetic way. How do you avoid such pitfalls as a director? Are there any taboos?
Taboo is a difficult word because it screams prohibition.
In principle, there should be no taboo in art.
I would speak of the existential-ethical questions that such a piece brings with it.
One can do justice to the sage, in this respect one can only speak of different degrees of failure.
The melodrama in “Passenger” can really become a problem.
For example, I find myself asking my video designer during a cloud projection: “Is the sunset too reddish?” Here every aesthetic value judgment turns into an ethical and moral one.
At the same time, that is the quality of the piece: that it draws you in emotionally and at the same time there are certain means of distance.
Apart from the fact that the decision-makers in the Soviet Union rejected the piece - why did it only have its theatrical premiere in Bregenz in 2010? This was associated with a sudden rediscovery of this composer. Strangely late, right?
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This is one of the few operas that has really been rediscovered in a lasting way.
Interestingly, the aspect of the Shoah, the persecution of the Jews, is comparatively less pronounced in this piece.
There is a Jewish woman, but she is only a minor character.
This probably has to do with the Soviet tradition.
Instead, there is a Russian, almost propaganda-Soviet figure that is treated more extensively, but we deleted him.
From our point of view, this “imbalance” probably prevented its rediscovery.
“The Passenger” was basically stored in the Soviet poison cabinet.
Is “The Passenger” a piece of the moment in our times that are drifting to the right? Or are you overloading them with it?
It is always a piece of the hour.
I also don't think we can learn anything from this for current political debates.
However, one cannot so quickly tick off “The Passenger” and put it in a drawer, including that of remembrance.
I like that.
Wounds are kept open.
And it is made clear that the Holocaust was not a blip in German history, as the AfD believes.
It becomes very clear how quickly and close you get to the limits of civilization.
You have already revealed that you are adding a third level to the events in the concentration camp and later on the ship.
Exactly, also so that it doesn't become a purely historical drama.
The third level takes place in 2024 on a ship, where Lisa, who has grown old, goes back again like the old Rose in “Titanic”.
Maybe to bring her husband's ashes back to his fatherland or motherland.
This brings a certain presentness to the story: the question of how one deals with guilt many decades later.
For me it is significant that this is the first new production of The Passenger since the death of Zofia Posmysz.
Now you have to deal with many things on your own that were authenticated and justified from the author's point of view.
That's more difficult - but it also offers the chance to take "The Passenger" a step further in terms of reception.
Are you feeling torn right now? Her directing work, just think of the “Ring of the Nibelung” in Munich planned for next season, is in full swing, and at the same time there is the job as director of the Hamburg State Opera from 2025.
I wouldn't call it torn.
Ask me again in three years.
I'm currently hoping that with my directing work on my own house, I'll be able to do more than just consider what this effect has in Hamburg.
You have to free yourself from that.
I will direct at least two things there every season, one on the big stage and one smaller project.
In the first year I will actually publish quite a lot to show off my handwriting.
Hamburg is an interesting place.
I didn't grow up there, so I can see it from the outside.
Rebuilding a house with a great history just really appeals to me.
Actually, you are a discontinued model. There are manager-intendents everywhere, Hamburg now has an old-school artist-intendent.
Of course I find the position interesting for myself.
On the other hand, since Jossi Wieler and Barrie Kosky are no longer artistic directors, there is no longer a house in the German opera conference that is run by an artist.
And I don't think that's a good thing either.
I'm far from dissing manager-intendents.
But there should be a mix.
I saw myself as having a bit of responsibility.
The interview was conducted by Markus Thiel.
Premiere
on March 10th at the Bavarian State Opera.
The plot:
There is a German diplomat on board an ocean liner who is traveling to Brazil with his wife Lisa to take up a new position.
Lisa sees a woman who she actually thinks is dead.
Lisa confesses to her husband that she was a concentration camp guard in Auschwitz.
Now the setting switches back and forth between ship and concentration camp: While Lisa tries to come to terms with the memory of Martha, who was imprisoned at the time, her husband struggles with this revelation.
It remains unclear whether the woman is really Martha.