Berg - Wozzeck (Vienna, 2022)

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2022

Philippe Jordan, Simon Stone, Christian Gerhaher, Sean Panikkar, Jörg Schneider, Dmitry Belosselskiy, Anja Kampe, Josh Lovell, Peter Kellner, Stefan Astakhov, Thomas Ebenstein, Christina Bock

Wierner Staatsoper Live - 31 March 2022

Whether it's the inherent power and meaning of Büchner's original unfinished drama or whether it gains something more from Alban Berg's score, Wozzeck is one of the most powerful and enigmatic statements about the human condition in either form. When it comes to staging it then it almost demands a statement from the director, and Simon Stone is a director with things to say or at least a director with a distinctive vision. His production of Wozzeck for Vienna has some impressive stagecraft and singing, but whether it makes a statement or not, or whether it even needs to, there's no question that the essential qualities of the work are there for all to see.

One thing you can expect from Stone, whether directing opera or drama, is that it's necessary to make it contemporary, something that speaks of now and not of a time in the past. You would certainly expect that when dealing with the themes of Wozzeck, and not unexpectedly, the setting of this production is contemporary (in a gym, in the Underground), minimalist and faithful to the content, letting the work and the music express everything that is essential. Nothing is the different from what you would expect and yet it is at the same time unfamiliar.

The first scene is closest to what you expect to see at the opening of Wozzeck, Franz shaving the Captain, although not as a soldier for his bullying commanding officer, but working apparently at a barbershop. We can presume it doesn't need to be in a military setting for the nature of Franz's belittlement at the hands of others to be meaningful. The scene ends with the throat of the other two customers being slit open by the barbers, creating a feeling of a general sense of the absurdity and hopelessness of life, at least as it is experienced by one man, Franz Wozzeck, but also a premonition perhaps of fate of Marie.

Stone uses a tripartite rotating stage that, for the early part at least, flows continuously in a cycle were one scene flows straight through to the next, despite this being a work made up of distinct scenes that in the unfinished original did not even have a set order. The flow of one scene into the next however captures something of the abstraction of Franz's life, the disconnect between reality and how it appears in his mind, already disturbed by the experiments of the doctor, making it seem even more unreal and disorientating.

The flowing rotation is not even a linear or cyclical approach, Stone collapsing time in the scene of Marie's infidelity with the drum major, showing three versions of the scene at different time points almost simultaneously as Wozzeck puts the pieces together in his mind. The technique was used by Stone also in his remarkable Tristan und Isolde for Aix-en-Provence last year. Here there is a sense that Franz is grasping to restore some kind of sense or order upon the randomness of his life going out of control.

If there is a larger purpose to the rotating and constantly shifting scenes, aside from an incredible sense of stagecraft of Robert Cousins to rapidly change the sets with fluid ease, it is this idea of seeking to impose structure while time and life is moving faster than Wozzek can keep up with it. All his interactions as a soldier, as a father, in a military or family unit seem to be a search for something to grasp onto, guide him and show him the way out of his setbacks and troubles. Marie likewise has the Bible and religion to turn to for order and meaning, but what she reads in it seems to offer no comfort.

Stone's approach is effective then, but it's also open enough that any criticism you might have of the stage setting and his direction within it could also be said to work in its favour. Some might see the plain white walls of basic sets as somewhat cold and sterile - in complete contrast for example to William Kentridge's more elaborate approach (Salzburg, 2017) - but the sterility and emptiness of the white rooms, contrasted with the overgrown scenes of disorder in nature - could also be seen to reflect a world that offers no comfort to Franz. As a statement of futility, the final depiction of the dead body of Franz being lifted on a crane out of a cistern is certainly suitably bleak.

The search for order and the failure to find any comfort in any kind of artificial construct is reflected too in Alban Berg's score. Meticulously and tightly constructed, with historical antecedents, it seems to offer a clearly defined structure, but the atonal, unpredictable progression and enigmatic development hints at the difficulties of comprehending the underlying complexities of a world when we are looking for simplicity. It's a source of constant wonder, but there is nothing comforting in Berg's music.

The Wiener Staatsoper production is conducted by Philippe Jordan and he has a good measure of the detail of Berg as well as the overall impact that it strives to achieve. The opera leaves you dissatisfied that it seems to offer no respite and no sense of resolution. It's an unremittingly bleak view of the human condition and yet at the same time it is beyond impressive that this is capable of being expressed in such musical terms. Simon Stone's production matches that, leaving you feeling that it needs something more, yet impressed at what it has been able to say at the same time.

That inevitably places considerable challenges on the two principal roles, but we have two fine performers here in Christian Gerhaher and Anja Kampe. This seems like an ideal role for Gerhaher and sings it well, bringing character and personality to the role, or humanity maybe, since it's essential to see Wozzeck as such, not as some pitiful figure, but one striving to find a place in a world that seems to be conspiring against him. Anja Kampe is also excellent, not just a foil for Wozzeck but a person in her own right with strength of character, just similarly lost and unfortunately not on a wavelength that can help him.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper Live

Berg - Wozzeck (Salzburg, 2017)

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Salzburg Festival, 2017

Vladimir Jurowski, William Kentridge, Matthias Goerne, John Daszak, Mauro Peter, Gerhard Siegel, Jens Larsen, Tobias Schabel, Huw Montague Rendall, Heinz Göhrig, Asmik Grigorian, Frances Pappas

Medici.tv - 27 August 2017

Like Alban Berg's only other stage work Lulu, Wozzeck is an opera where the music and the drama are intricately connected. Quite how Berg manages to achieve this synthesis in both pieces is complex and would take years to analyse, but there's not really any need for it to be interpreted; the power of these two remarkable works and how they are expressed speaks for itself. It's not really for a director to interpret Lulu or Wozzeck, as you think an artist like William Kentridge might do, as much as provide mood and context. Kentridge, as with his production of Lulu, does this well in this Salzburg Festival production, staging a Wozzeck that firmly has his own individual stamp (what Kentridge staging doesn't?) while not letting that vision get in the way of the work itself.

Georg Büchner's Woyzeck is a study of a man's - or man's - physical and mental limitations. In the 24 quite harsh and gruelling fragments of the unfinished drama, a body and a mind are tested as far as they can be pushed before their owner goes over the edge. Is there just one thing that proves to be too much for Franz Woyzeck, or is it an accumulation of miseries and torments of a wretched existence? Woyzeck is perhaps not so much a bleak account of how miserable life can be as how much strength is required to deal with the daily vicissitudes of life and how delicate and fragile a balance the human psyche rests on.

There is no strict order to the fragments of Büchner's Woyzeck, which is a factor that tends to work in its favour, preventing it from being a simple matter of cause and effect leading to madness and murder. Whatever way you look at it though, in the case of both Büchner and Berg it's apparent from that Franz Wozzeck is cracking. A common soldier, he is brutalised by the captain in his unit, he is experimented on by the doctor, he takes on odd jobs and consequently has little time or thought for his unmarried partner Marie and their child. The dissatisfied Marie's lewd affair with a handsome drum major is just one other factor that beats him down physically as well as mentally.

But Wozzeck also has another element that is less easily identified or rationalised; Franz is affected by hallucinations. Is this just a reaction of his body reacting to the pressures it is undergoing, an indication that his mind is breaking, or a sign of his ability or desire to see something greater beyond the material world? Franz certainly longs for meaning in order, for life to adhere to a structure that makes sense, but instead he finds nature cruel and capricious. Everyone is either looking for power, fame, recognition or satisfaction of their own private desires. To the doctor for example hoping that his experiments on Franz will make him famous, Wozzeck is "a mere human being" not worth losing sleep over, "The death of a salamander would be far more serious".

The world that Wozzeck inhabits is one where horizons are being closed down, where hopes are being dashed, where darkness is gathering. William Kentridge's production at Salzburg is one then that compartmentalises each of the scenes down into little vignettes, brief little areas of illumination in the dark apocalyptic world of the mind. The doctor's cabinet is like a small toilet space, other scenes open up and close, connected by rickety platforms, where only a watery death at the bottom awaits. The set of Wozzeck's mind is filled of course with projections of Kentridge's animated thick-line black ink sketches, depicting life, war, with grotesque figures wearing distorted face masks. War imagery features prominently, suggesting that Wozzeck's disintegrating mind might be caused by PTSD or, in a wider context, that it is the world that has been distorted beyond recognition by the horrors of war.

Kentridge's concepts and drawings are brought to life by the set designs of Sabine Theunissen and co-directed by Luc De Wit, and they do manage to connect everything and bring a continuity here that's not there in Büchner's scenes. But it feels illustrative and doesn't come anywhere close to expressing the madness or despair that is at the heart of Wozzeck, nor the sense of an order of madness that Berg's music constructions suggest. The tavern scene, for example, should be a scene where in Wozzeck's perspective the whole world "writhes and rolls in fornication", but there's little sense of this, nor in the direction of Wozzeck himself do we really get a sense of him buckling under the pressures of his tormentors and his own delusions.

Kentridge might not get to the heart of Wozzeck then - and maybe that's a place we don't really want to delve into too deeply - but as a performance and a spectacle illustrative of a work of infinite richness, there's still a great deal to admire and provoke thoughts in the 2017 Salzburg Wozzeck. There's much to find of interest in the musical performance of the Vienna Philharmonic directed by Vladimir Jurowski (much too much to take in on a single listening), and the singing performances are all good, although I found little in them that was really satisfying in terms of characterisation and continuity. It's more important for Franz and Marie that the other cast of grotesques, and in that respect Matthias Goerne could certainly have done with a little more direction, and Asmik Grigorian just didn't the lusty verve or the earthy complexity of Marie's emotional openness.

In a work as complex and delicately balanced as Wozzeck, it's important to establish a connection between the music and the drama, and Kentridge sets the mood, illustrates it well and allows Berg's musical score to fill in the areas where it is best placed to probe the deeper questions raised in the work. But Berg's opera still needs more than that. There's a human element that is admittedly submerged in some very dark and abstract ideas, but - like Lulu as well - it is essential that the singers don't just perform it, but are able to bring something human and personal that allows the audience to relate to and find a context for the difficult experiences that Franz and Marie undergo. The Salzburg production has much to admire, but it doesn't have the essential human involvement.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele, Medici.tv

Berg - Wozzeck

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2013

Lothar Koenigs, Andreas Kriegenburg, Simon Keenlyside, Angela Denoke, Roman Sadnik, Kevin Conners, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Wolfgang Bankl, Scott Wilde, Matthew Grills, Dean Power, Heike Grötzinger

Staatsoper.TV Internet steaming - 6th October 2013

It's hard to know how you should feel or quite by what criteria you judge the performance of any Alban Berg opera. Wozzeck, Berg's only completed opera (Lulu's third act remained unfinished at the time of his death), should I suppose be a painful experience and should gradually beat you down much in the same way that life does for its protagonist. The music too is by no means comforting or easy to listen to, but neither is it inaccessible or "difficult" in the way that Lulu's 12-tone serialism can often be. As a reflection of the drama, it's dark and unrelenting, and so too is the Bayerische's 2013 production directed by Andreas Kriegenburg and conducted by Lothar Koenigs.

Part of the problem with knowing quite what to make of Wozzeck and its protagonist undoubtedly stems from the fragmentary nature of the episodes in Georg Büchner's original unfinished manuscript. Wozzeck, we are told in the introduction to the Bayerische's production, is a good man who is ground down by the system, by the brutality, ignorance and hypocrisy of other people, by poverty, misery and illness, by life in general. But is he a good man, is he an innocent or is he simply a disturbed individual? It's difficult to tell, since he reacts angrily to Marie's infidelity but remains outwardly impassive to what goes on in relation to the abuse and exploitation of his nature and character by the Captain, the Doctor and the Drum Major. Until obviously, it all becomes too much and he finally cracks...

If there's any indication then just what the inner nature of Wozzeck is, it must be found in Berg's music. Here you have his personality, his confusion and his building anger, all in a way that makes rather more sense of the eventual violent release of his frustrations. And, yes, it tells you that Wozzeck is at heart a good man. Berg's music is a rich combination of sounds, melodies and voices, a genuinely free experimental attempt to redefine the structures of operatic language outside of the constrictions of the traditional or indeed the atonal language. There are no restrictions, old is mixed with new, the three acts of five scenes are each described as 'Character Pieces' (Act I), a 'Symphony in Five Movements' (Act II) and 'Six Inventions' (Act III) that employ a variety of musical forms and styles to cover the whole range of the subject. It truly is music in service of drama and character, not in service of music itself.

If a production engages with it in the way that it ought to, it should achieve the full impact of Wozzeck's terrible sequence of dramatic events. The three acts played straight through without intermission Andreas Kriegenburg's production and Harald B. Thor's sets unquestionably achieve that. Under predominately monochrome lighting the locations are almost invariably within damp, dank and misty and silver-blue moonlit settings capture the utter darkness and misery of the situation. They also give some indication of Wozzeck's mindset and even give premonitory hints of his eventual fate - Wozzeck spending most of the time with his feet soaking as he plods across the waterlogged stage.  There's practically no colour, the production team resisting the urge even to splash some red around.  There's a brief flame at one stage, but no sunsets and no blood.

You would however expect the stage and lighting to depict a rather dark and grim picture, so what is notable about the Bayerische's production is its division between interiors and exteriors that don't so much coincide with Wozzeck's actual location as to whether his mind is locked-in or outwardly expressive (and even then, his outward expressions are still somewhat dissociative). There is also a slightly greater role given over to Wozzeck and Marie's son, who remains mostly within the boxed room detached from the watery floor space that the others occupy. He is mostly silent but paints words on the wall on occasion ("Papa, Geld!, Hure" - Father, Money! and Slut) that heighten the sordidness of the situations and indicate that the child is not untouched by them.

All of this works with the nature of the work itself and doesn't over-complicate the character of the music or the singing performances which are just as vital an aspect. Again you can hardly judge the singing performances for their beauty of expression, but there are nonetheless great demands placed on all the performers and they cope well. Simon Keenlyside has considerable experience in the role of Wozzeck and is performing the role in several other productions this season. His performance here is, not unexpectedly, deeply intense, conveying as much through his posture and bearing as he does through his expressive singing. Angela Denoke is just as impressive as Marie, a thankless role of a character that is scarcely any less put-upon than Wozzeck, but this is a strong production all round, with the Bayerische's regular company singers all putting in solid performances as the work's gallery of grotesques.