patrikpen: The Umanity of Wozzeck in M&V 26 August

domenica 7 gennaio 2018

The Umanity of Wozzeck in M&V 26 August

The Humanity of Wozzeck

Alban Berg from Salzburg,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

The tetralogy of power and of sex — one of the features of the 2017 Salzburg Festival ends with Alban Berg's Wozzeck. The opera was conceived when Berg was a soldier on the Hungarian front. It was also the time when, led by Schoenberg, the Second Viennese School was replacing the whole of music with the twelve note row system. Berg had been highly impressed by Georg Büchner's drama with the same title, written in about 1830. He reduced the play from a three hour twenty-five scene piece to a ninety minute three act (fifteen scene) opera or music drama. Normally Berg's Wozzeck is performed without intermission. I saw and heard it on 24 August.

I recently reviewed Wozzeck performances for this magazine (see 'Towards the Abyss', 4 November 2015 and 'A High Level', 23 September 2015). Thus, I focus only on the very special features of this Salzburg co-production with the New York Metropolitan Opera, Toronto Opera and Sydney Opera.

The production underplays the philosophical aspects of the work. They are in the background whilst in the forefront there is the humanity of Wozzeck, Marie, Andres and the other characters, even of the arrogant Captain and of the psychopathic Doctor. Stage director William Kentridge and his creative team — Luc De Wit, co-director, Sabine Theunissen, sets, Greta Goiris, costumes, Catherine Meyburgh, video compositing and editing, Urs Schönebaum, lighting and Kim Gunning, video operator — place the action on a mountain of precarious platforms, staircase fragments and discarded furniture. Through a series of doors, we see the Captain's office, the Doctor's laboratory, Wozzeck and Marie's poor dwelling, the military band parade, the tavern and the woods without changing scenes. In addition, through projections of World War Iphotographs and animation, as the drama unfolds, we see crashed airplanes, maps of troop movements and tense waiting. In this context, the tension is more on war than on class condition. However, the war is not viewed as the first world conflict itself, but as a permanent status of humanity.

The Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, provides the right interpretation for this concept of the production, especially in the engrossing interludes and in the moving D minor finale.

The singers never exceed in emphasis and deal with the vocal score as an elegy. Matthias Goerne (Wozzeck) and Asmik Grigorian (Marie) are perfect in their roles, full of humanity and without any indication of psychosis as seen in recent productions. The large group of other characters around them are also very 'normal'.