The Most Influential Opera of the 20th Century, ‘Wozzeck’ Turns 100 Years Old


Theodor Adorno must After the premiere of “Wozzeck” at the Berlin State Opera, offer your condolences to Alban Berg until late on the night of 14 December 1925.

The problem wasn’t that Berg’s first opera was a disaster, that this unknown student of Arnold Schoenberg was ready to be sent back to his former anonymity and abject poverty.

The problem for Berg was that his musically abrasive, politically uncompromising piece, based on a play by Georg Büchner he saw in 1914 and immediately considered making music, was such a triumph that he began to question its true value. Adorno later recalled that he “consoled her for her success”.

In the 100 years since Berg, one success remains “Wozzeck” finished He revised the manuscript on July 16, 1922. The most radical opera of its time, one that still looks strikingly modern in its centenary, Strauss’ “Salome” and Debussy’s “Pelléas and Mélisande.”

With its tense, rapidly changing scene-changing cinematic structure and its ubiquitous appetite for style, it’s easy to argue that “Wozzeck” emerged, not to mention using fleeting, devastating moments of tonality among the precise structures of its largely atonal note. actually being the most effective of them all.

In the celebration of an opera, a series of performances that it is perhaps difficult to even think of celebrating comes the right time. A William Kentridge Staging played at the Met 2019 passes through March 30 with the conductor at the Paris Opera Susanna Malkki at the helm, before arriving in Barcelona May, with Matthias Goerne as Wozzeck. a new Simon Stone production with baritone Christian Gerhaher opens at the Vienna State Opera in the title role March 21. and on TuesdayAndris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra give a concert performance at Carnegie Hall. Christine Goerke as Marie.

Part of “Wozzeck”‘s overwhelming power comes from his plan. In 15 short scenes, Berg chronicles the corruption and death of Wozzeck, a poor soldier harassed by his captain, experimented on by a doctor, and shaken by the suspicion that his partner, Marie, was unfaithful to a drum major. Enraged, Wozzeck kills Marie, then strangles himself. The curtain falls on their son, who rides a hobby horse. It remains unclear whether he will escape the fate of his parents – and the general forces inevitably tied to what Wozzeck calls “we poor people”.

What explains the enduring power of Berg’s opera? And what was the effect really? Here are edited excerpts from interviews with artists who love to work.

“Wozzeck” was the first opera that made me believe in opera as a viable art form. This huge musical expression of the lives of truly powerless people. Thinking that opera could only tell stories without stories of a privileged position, but also that it could truly represent another point of view and do it with incredible imagination, opened up the possibilities of what opera could still be.

One of the most compassionate operas I know. Not the Beethoven model. Not to mention this aspirational quality that some of us think the music captures so well. There is no salvation in the fragment, and that is exactly what is so powerful and urgent. There will be no horns heralding that tyranny will be miraculously overcome, as in “Fidelio.” We must be among the audience who must have our voices heard on behalf of Wozzeck.

Büchner was much older than Karl Marx in his ideas, but was similar. Büchner was not the founder of communism, but he was honest about the difficulties the poor faced in establishing a normal life. This is poignant, if not very ideological.

You have a study that deals with a scary topic. What is happening is terrible, but the important thing as a singer and also in the audience is that you have a wonderful joy to see thoughts expressed with such precision into words and music. It is almost without a doubt a masterpiece of the 20th century. Nothing is decoration; nothing can be neglected; every tone is important; every word matters. This is the essence of a fast-moving world that is modernity.

The thing that always impressed me about “Wozzeck” was that although it came out of a composition full of compositions that were revolutionary in itself, it was Berg, whose process married the engagement, the head and the heart. your wife.

Despite the rigidity of working with Schoenberg, he realized that you had to go where you needed to go. For example, during the penultimate break, he subtly returns to this early D minor piano sketch and realizes that this is what we need right here, right now. From the point of view of a modernist, expressionist language, he is willing, able and happy to embrace whatever he needs at a given time.

People talk about how hard it is, and that’s not entirely true, but I think it’s mostly about how incredibly intense, rich, and deep it is. You have several layers that make it interesting every time you hear it. Ever since I finally got the score and started working out, I was personally surprised to see how much warmth, beauty, and even humor there was. The piece is terribly perfect.

Berg is, of course, incredibly smart. But when the story gets unbearable in its near-end sadness, it really simplifies the music, giving us the space to really feel the pain, the fate, and all that. It gives us time to digest everything and then of course comes the final blow. This is absolutely terrible.

It was the first piece I came across, I really felt like I was looking at the harder parts of life and not looking away. I’ve always been interested in the idea of ​​opera, but when I looked at Mozart and Verdi, I felt like we were dealing with characters from my past that weren’t real, at least to me. When I first saw “Wozzeck,” these were ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and in Wozzeck’s case, it’s a world that’s really very similar to this character.

I remember being shaken by that big, monophonic B crescendo towards the end, just the feeling that it was inevitable. I don’t think the 12-minute crescendo at the end of my opera is a coincidence. “Dog Days” B is a quarter circle; it is a homage or reference to the moment. Before that piece there is life and after that there is life.

What Berg pulled out of Büchner’s play is, in my opinion, the best piece we have in terms of story and characters. Everyone is completely fit in their character and you immediately learn what kind of person he is and how he relates to others.

You have two different levels. You have this very depressing underdog Wozzeck in a position of slavery. He always needs money. He may feel that something is not right in his relationship. It’s getting crazier and out of control. On the other hand, it is a tragic love story. He becomes a murderer. You empathize, you have feelings for him – but in the end he kills a person.

I see Marie as a very complex and contradictory character. Like most of us right now, she’s trying to find joy in simple things in a reckless world. He doesn’t have much, so he tries to make the best with what he has. She grasps moments of joy and later feels guilty for them. She feels that she should do better, be better, make do with what she’s got, and if she can do that—maybe that helps her avoid judgment she. She is a mother struggling to preserve her female identity. I became this woman. Depending on the day, I am this woman.

That’s what Alban Berg did to make the story so uncluttered and so emotionally intense – I think up until now people have been totally enamored with the story, especially at the end. We always have tremendous empathy with kids and that kid comes out and says, “Hopp, whop!” when she sings. If there are human feelings when you start crying in that opera, this is the last point.

Schoenberg never broke the rules he set when writing the 12-tone music. Berg did so because Berg was such a theater genius that, like Mozart, he knew that sometimes you have to break the rules to be more effective.

This was the first opera I saw live at the Met in 1999 when I was 18. This idea, which I see as one of the superpowers of opera, showing us the darkest sides of human nature, woke me up. In those 90 minutes, I had the instinctive experience of recognizing my own dark side and letting me go because I was in the safe, velvet box of the theatre.

In a way, I’m shocked it didn’t more effective. I wish the opera had continued on this experimental path. “Wozzeck” was not contrary; It was celebrated and performed everywhere. Berg lived thanks to it for a long time and had the honor of being accused by the Nazis. Now the opera has been withdrawn – mostly; there are many exceptions – to a safer, tastier space. Part of me wishes I could bring back this momentum of “degenerate” art.



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