Extra: Wozzek
Operaen
Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck is about human vulnerability and desperation in a brutal world. It’s a modern masterpiece which stands out amongst the operas of the 20th century, and creates music out of a range of emotions: from hope and joy to existential angst and infinite sorrow.
The young soldier Wozzeck is mocked and taken advantage of by his superiors. He makes a bit of money on the side for his girlfriend Marie and their bastard son by letting a doctor perform medical experiments on him. When his beloved Marie, another victim of circumstance, is unfaithful to him, his world gradually falls apart. The result is fatal.
A successful production
“A powerful and stimulating evening that will take your breath away,” wrote the Frankfurter Neue Presse when this production premiered at Oper Frankfurt in June 2016. The stage director Christof Loy focuses on the interior life of the characters, and gives them clear-cut characteristics. Together with Herbert Murauer’s powerful backdrops and Berg’s intense music, he transports us into Wozzeck’s progressing delusions, his confused self-image and his doubts.
The Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen sang the lead role in Frankfurt, much to the excitement of its critics: “With his warm and resonant voice, he shows us how one who is trapped in his own madness finds solace through his absurd visions,” praised the reviewer of the Frankfurter Rundschaus. Iversen sings the title role again in Oslo.
Voices and jealousy
Wozzeck is based on a true story. The year is 1821, and a soldier from Leipzig kills his girlfriend. He explains to the doctors and the judges that he had heard voices commanding him to stab her to death.
For three years the judges and psychiatrists debate whether Johann Christian Woyzeck was of sound mind at the time of the crime. After concluding that the murder was committed out of jealousy, he is executed by decapitation with a sword at Marktplatz on August 24th, 1824.
The execution got a lot of publicity, and inspired the poet Georg Büchner to write a drama about a poor soldier ruined by his circumstances. The incomplete play was first performed in 1914, with Alban Berg amongst the audience. He perceived at once that this was a theme for an opera, and immediately got to work on the piece. But the progress of the composition was interrupted by WWI, when the composer himself had to serve as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. The original premiere was held at the Berlin State Opera on the 14th of December, 1925, and the opera quickly became a modern classic.
Music: Alban Berg
Libretto: Alban Berg, after Georg Büchners drama Woyzeck
Conductor: Lothar Koenigs
Director: Christof Loy
Revival Director: Corinna Tetzel
Set Designer: Herbert Murauer
Costume Designer: Judith Weihrauch
Lighting Designer: Olaf Winter
