MET: Wozzeck

[Dave2002]

I still find Wozzeck bizarre. Really not sure what to make of the Met production shown in cinemas tonight. I'm sure it was technically a tour de force, and very well done, but it's such an odd work. Perhaps the Met people tried to be far too clever with the backdrop stuff. I've only got one other comparison - live at the ROH a few years ago, which I thought was terrific. Using a sort of puppet thing with what looked like bits of gas masks for the child struck me as not really adding anything too desirable, though it did make the production even weirder, as well as giving roles for some other characters who also doubled up as puppeteers. It also dehumanised the role significantly so that the final scene didn't work so well - for me at any rate.

Towards the end I wondered if there were glimpses of works by other composers in the music. One which struck me was Puccini - Girl of the Golden West - which was composed very shortly beforehand, but maybe I imagined that! Do we know whether Berg openly "borrowed" ideas from other composers? There were a few other possible "transcriptions", though I couldn't decide which composers they might have been based on.

[kindofblue]

I still find Wozzeck bizarre. Really not sure what to make of the Met production shown in cinemas tonight. I'm sure it was technically a tour de force, and very well done, but it's such an odd work. Perhaps the Met people tried to be far too clever with the backdrop stuff. I've only got one other comparison - live at the ROH a few years ago, which I thought was terrific. Using a sort of puppet thing with what looked like bits of gas masks for the child struck me as not really adding anything too desirable, though it did make the production even weirder, as well as giving roles for some other characters who also doubled up as puppeteers. It also dehumanised the role significantly so that the final scene didn't work so well - for me at any rate.

Towards the end I wondered if there were glimpses of works by other composers in the music. One which struck me was Puccini - Girl of the Golden West - which was composed very shortly beforehand, but maybe I imagined that! Do we know whether Berg openly "borrowed" ideas from other composers? There were a few other possible "transcriptions", though I couldn't decide which composers they might have been based on.

I too am drawn to 'Wozzeck' without really understanding why, and one certainly needs to be feeling sufficiently emotionally robust to withstand a performance. I agree Dave2002 that we were in the hands of a producer wanting to impress, in this instance William Kentridge. I found the constant moving visual imagery distracting at times, whether the cartoon-like images filling the whole of the backdrop or the smaller, home-cinema-scale screen stage left. They were distracting because they were in themselves interesting, but they took attention away rather than enhancing what were hearing. There were also moments when I felt that I was being told what to feel.
This was a shame as the singing - Peter Mattei as Wozzeck and Elza van den Heever as Marie - was superb. One of the advantages of a cinema viewing is the possibility of close-ups, and the anguish of both was utterly authentic. I loved the Met's playing under Nezet-Seguin, the climactic scenes were breathtaking.
I'm also with you Dave2002 on the disappointment of the final scene, it really wasn't clear that Wozzeck had drowned at all. My overall impression was of a very cluttered, one might say 'busy' production where Kentridge became a little too fond of his gizmos and trickery. In a great performance of 'Wozzeck' one can be overwhelmed by his loneliness and despair, his humanity being swamped by an unfeeling, brutal state. There was so much going on visually in this production I could barely pick Wozzeck out at all.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I thought it was a stunningly well sung and played production though agree the back projections seemed very cluttered . I have a feeling though as the human eye does much better with contrast that the tv camera it would have been better in the theatre. Some very good acting with the clear diction making the relatively simple German in the libretto intelligible even without subtitles. The only direct quote I can make out is the vicious sendup of Ochs’s waltz in the tavern scene and that in itself is a lift from the Josef Strauss piece Dynamiten heard as the VPO New Years Concert last week.

[verismissimo]

Wonderfully well played and sung, I thought, but all that business going on on stage rather got in the way of the power of the drama.

I've always loved Alban Berg's music: especially the String Quartet and the Lyric Suite for string quartet; the piano sonata; some songs; and of course the violin concerto.

It struck me that there is a contradiction in the work itself: while it is fundamentally a chamber opera concerned with intimate relationships, the orchestra is enormous!

[mopsus]

The opening phrase of the opera is a warped quotation from the Pastoral Symphony.

[Dave2002]

The opening phrase of the opera is a warped quotation from the Pastoral Symphony.

I was going to disagree, but then at 2 minutes 15 seconds an oboe has an approximation in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdinmlIdnYw

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was going to disagree, but then at 2 minutes 15 seconds an oboe has an approximation in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdinmlIdnYw

It appears as even more of a fragment at 1.27 ....

[Dave2002]

It appears as even more of a fragment at 1.27 ....

Very faint - but maybe!

I note that Berg wrote about the opera aftewards.

In his book The Problem of Opera, Berg wrote of his opera, Wozzeck, as follows:

There must not be anyone in the audience who ... notices anything of these fugues, inventions, suites and sonata movements, variations, and passacaglias. Nobody must be filled with anything except the idea of the opera.

https://www.musicwithease.com/berg-wozzeck.html

There are apparently leitmotivs and Berg suggested that much of the work has structure.

The article at Wikipedia discusses leitmotivs and musical form - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wozzeck Fritz Mahler sketched out a set of structures.

Berg also noted bugle calls used by the Austrian army.

At 16.50 in the video there is a short fragment sung by Marie which is reminiscent of another song - but it's a mere fragment.

[Felix the Gnat]

Saw this live relay from the MET at a cinema on the A10.

Pros:
Truly excellent singing from all
Yanick and the band almost perfect

Cons:
Singing distractingly favoured over the orchestra - not good in this work
Awful set with ramps and wooden structures all over the place and very claustrophobic. No sense of scene location, all pretty much the same whether a pond or an officer's mess. Clever (not)
Kicked off not with a shave, but Wozzeck showing a film on a projector - great idea, NOT
Peter Mattei was transformed into a Private Pike lookalike from Dad's Army - very disorientation in the intense scenes
The infant was doll on a stick wearing a post-apocalypse gas mask, FFS!!!

On balance quite a disappointment.

Not a patch on the truly amazing Akhnaten from the MET last November which was a 2019 highlight for me.



.

[bluestateprommer]

Dutch National Opera has a streaming video of their recent Wozzeck production (with Maltman and Westbroek) available through tomorrow (again, sorry that I didn't post about this earlier), when you scroll down the page a bit:

https://www.operaballet.nl/en/online/opera/streaming

[gurnemanz]

Not totally encouraged by those reviews but will certainly watch later. Even as a student, when I hardly knew any operas, I took great interest in the work since it was based on a play we were studying on my undergrad German Lit course. Having no money I borrowed LPs form the library and got hold of a cheap Reclam edition of the libretto. Dave says above: "Berg suggested that much of the work has structure". What struck me very forcefully, even then, thanks to some sleeve notes was that the formal structure was extremely tight, complex and highly organised, even schematic. I copied that scheme out longhand for future reference. Found an excellent pdf here.

The work made a huge impression on me and I became a little bit obsessed with it. I still can't help thinking of Marie when I see a red moon. ("Wie ein bluitig Eisen!" as Wozzeck exclaims just before stabbing here in the neck) .... the Captain's pointing out to Wozzeck in grotesque falsetto, using the third person. "Er hat keine Moraaaaaal!"

I managed to see a concert performance in 1973 under Herbert Kegel in Germany with Theo Adam impressive and powerful as Wozzeck (a great performance subsequently issued as a recording). We've only seen it staged once - a brilliant unmissable show at ROH a few years ago where Matthias Goerne ends up fully submerged in a water tank like some kind of lab specimen.

[Frances_iom]

... We've only seen it staged once - a brilliant unmissable show at ROH a few years ago where Matthias Goerne ends up fully submerged in a water tank like some kind of lab specimen.

Wasn't there an earlier production at ENO - I recall seeing one which really brought out the horror of the story - it's an opera I don't usually want to revisit just on the basis of the emotional experience

[Dave2002]

Dutch National Opera has a streaming video of their recent Wozzeck production (with Maltman and Westbroek) available through tomorrow (again, sorry that I didn't post about this earlier), when you scroll down the page a bit:

https://www.operaballet.nl/en/online/opera/streaming

Looks really good this. Will have to squeeze it in during the next five or so hours, before the next opera stream starts - for the coming week. The Beethoven 6th quotes are very obvious in this production.

PS: I feel sure there's another quote (apart from Beethoven - which seems to recur several times) - perhaps a Schubert or Mahler song - just around the time when the band passes out in the street.

[LHC]

Not totally encouraged by those reviews but will certainly watch later. Even as a student, when I hardly knew any operas, I took great interest in the work since it was based on a play we were studying on my undergrad German Lit course. Having no money I borrowed LPs form the library and got hold of a cheap Reclam edition of the libretto. Dave says above: "Berg suggested that much of the work has structure". What struck me very forcefully, even then, thanks to some sleeve notes was that the formal structure was extremely tight, complex and highly organised, even schematic. I copied that scheme out longhand for future reference. Found an excellent pdf here.

The work made a huge impression on me and I became a little bit obsessed with it. I still can't help thinking of Marie when I see a red moon. ("Wie ein bluitig Eisen!" as Wozzeck exclaims just before stabbing here in the neck) .... the Captain's pointing out to Wozzeck in grotesque falsetto, using the third person. "Er hat keine Moraaaaaal!"

I managed to see a concert performance in 1973 under Herbert Kegel in Germany with Theo Adam impressive and powerful as Wozzeck (a great performance subsequently issued as a recording). We've only seen it staged once - a brilliant unmissable show at ROH a few years ago where Matthias Goerne ends up fully submerged in a water tank like some kind of lab specimen.

Incredibly, That production of Wozzeck with Matthias Goerne was as long ago as 2002, but like you it is indelibly stamped on my memory. Goerne had to stay underwater for several minutes keeping perfectly still, as if he had become another of the doctor's specimens. As he entered the tank he had to place a small and virtually invisible (to the audience) breathing tube in his mouth, and then stay motionless until the end of the opera. Here is Simon Keenlyside in a later revival.



My first encounter with Wozzeck was at the Opera House in 1984, with Jose van Dam as Wozzeck in a revival of a Willy Decker production with sets by Caspar Neher, who had designed the sets for the opera's premiere in Germany. Van Dam was stunning, and the sets gave the whole performance a real sense of historic authenticity.

I also remember seeing a memorable David Pountney production at ENO in the early 90s, with Donald Maxwell as Wozzzeck, which was also shown on BBC2 (this was in the days when it was still possible to see opera on TV).

[Dave2002]

Incredibly, That production of Wozzeck with Matthias Goerne was as long ago as 2002, but like you it is indelibly stamped on my memory. Goerne had to stay underwater for several minutes keeping perfectly still, as if he had become another of the doctor's specimens. As he entered the tank he had to place a small and virtually invisible (to the audience) breathing tube in his mouth, and then stay motionless until the end of the opera.

I’m not sure which year we saw it at the ROH, but we were transfixed. mrs d admitted not too long ago that she was terrified that Wozzeck wouldn’t get out of the fish tank, which added to her “excitement”. I could see the bubbles coming from the breathing tube, though I was still half expecting some safety person to come rushing on in the event that anything went wrong with the tube/air supply. mrs d was surprised when I told her I could see the plastic tube.

I do hope the ROH does employ such safety people - surely they must?

I’m not sure which year it was, but it may well have been 2002.