The Passenger, by Zofia Posmysz, and panel discussions at the Lincoln Center Festival, NY

• July 8 at 6 pm, free screening of The Passenger by Andrzej Munk at 6 pm in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (165 W. 65th Street, 10th floor). This unfinished Polish-language film won a FIPRESCI award at the Cannes Festival of 1964 and offers a different take on the same Zofia Posmysz source material that inspired the opera. Following the screening, Lincoln Center President Jed Bernstein will lead a panel discussion with Ms. Posmysz, Holocaust survivors Esther Bauer and Sam Cukier, and others.
• July 11 at 6 pm, Ms. Posmysz joins Houston Grand Opera dramaturg Menna Hanna for a panel discussion at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (165 W. 65th Street, 10th floor).

PLEASE NOTE: Tickets are required to attend the screening and panel discussions and are available for The Passenger ticketholders only. Any additional tickets will be made available to the general public on stand-by at the time of the events.

Set in the late 1950s aboard a cruise ship, The Passenger tells the story of Liese, 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 Liese once wielded control. Liese 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 Liese helped perpetrate, and her inescapable guilt, are unsparingly confronted.


Single tickets for The Passenger are available through CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, online at www.lincolncenterfestival.org and at the Avery Fisher Hall box office, 65th Street and Broadway.

Each performance is preceded by a 45-minute chamber concert (from 6 - 6:45 pm) featuring works by Mieczyslaw Weinberg performed by members of the ARC Ensemble. SOLD OUT

• July 10 All-Weinberg program: From the Lyrics of Baratinsky op. 125 (1979), songs for bass and piano; Piano Trio, op. 24 (1945)
• July 12 All-Weinberg program: Cello Sonata no. 2, op. 63 (1958); Violin Sonata no. 1, op. 12 (1943)
• July 13 All-Weinberg program: Piano Quintet, op. 18 (1945)

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 of New York for its support in bringing Zofia Posmysz to New York 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.

www.polishculture-nyc.org