Metropolitan Opera (live broadcast), 11/01/2020
Berg : Wozzeck
Metropolitan Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
I will freely admit that I find the music of the Second Viennese School difficult, and it is not something to which I turn very readily. That said, Berg is probably the most approachable of the three, and I have seen Wozzeck before, twice. Also, Mattei. I have a serious (musical) crush on Peter Mattei, who we do not get to hear often enough, and I would probably quite happily listen to him sing his way through a telephone directory, were he to be so inclined. The title role of Berg's opera is a tremendous role for a baritone, for although the opera is relatively short, it is intense, technically demanding, emotionally exhausting, usually played without interval, and Wozzeck is on stage for a good three-quarters of the proceedings. In other words, something for a first-class singer actor to really get his teeth into, and these New York performances are Mattei's first in this part.
The original play - or rather, the fragments that were all Georg Büchner left before his early death - dates originally from 1837, based on a true event that occurred a dozen years earlier. When an actual play is reconstituted from these fragments, it is 1913 by the time it receives its first performances, and Berg commences work on an opera the following year. The First World War intervenes, Berg is called up, so it is not until after the war that he is able to continue working seriously, and he completes the piece in 1922. It's that shadow of the war that director William Kentridge chose to highlight in his production.
In a short interview shown before the broadcast began, Kentridge stated that the production was set as "an anticipation, a foreboding, of the First World War". However, we see a great many images that do not so much suggest any sort of anticipation, as an actual happening. Kentridge's visuals are an extraordinary mix of charcoal drawing, surreal animations and video projection over a strange, multi-level wooden construct of ramshackle platforms and crooked walkways, and they are full of explosions of light and dark, barbed wire, dislocated figures, wounded, maimed and crippled chorus members and faces concealed by gas masks that very strongly suggest that the war is definitely going on right now.
This is a little contradictory to the actual spirit of the piece; part of the point of Wozzeck is that these are soldiers in peace-time, bound by their engagement but with nothing constructive (insofar as war can ever be considered constructive) to do, bored, disaffected and, for the ordinary private, living precariously on minimum pay with little to no chance to earn any sort of bonuses. Wozzeck has nothing, except for his common-law wife Marie and their small son. He is not the sharpest tool in the box, he is looked down upon by his superiors, his poverty is crushing, and he has nowhere to turn for support or guidance when Marie, tired of the poverty, allows herself to be distracted by the bling and swagger of the regimental drum-major. As Kentridge doesn't take the imagery as far as the trenches (this is clearly a garrison-town), it might seem that soldiers on the edge of real combat would be somewhat more focussed.
The other unusual decision Kentridge has taken is to replace the child - who has a tiny sung role in the last scene, but does appear silently earlier in the opera in a couple of scenes - with a puppet which has a gas mask for a face. The jury's still out on whether that's a good idea or not. It's difficult to connect emotionally with this rather eerie figure, and harder still to believe Marie, in particular, can have any real feeling for it, and that aspect of Marie, her love for her child, is a very significant aspect of her character. On the other hand, it's an undeniably striking image, and the very inhumanity of it reinforces the pathos of that scene right at the end, when the child, having been brutally informed of the death of his mother, merely goes on playing on his hobby-horse, too young to really understand. Visually, however, it's a very arresting production, with locations coalescing around the performers as the projected images meld and flow from one scene into another.
Musically, the standard was excellent, with even the smallest roles making their mark. Gerhard Siegel and Christian Van Horn were grimly comic book-ends as the Captain, ridiculous with his yelping tenor, and the portentous bass of the Doctor, while Christopher Ventris was a suitably bold and brash Drum-Major. However, the opera belongs to Wozzeck and Marie, and Peter Mattei and Elsa van den Heever brought a formidable confidence and intensity to their roles. Heever's sure and shining soprano was perhaps a little over-confident in a part that requires us to be reminded of her emotional frailty - it's hard to believe a character is insecure when she is delivered with such assurance - but at the same time the trust that confidence inspires in the listener is quite a liberating sensation.
Similarly with Mattei, whose control over the vocal demands of the role meant that you could focus on the dramatic content. Mattei's rich, honeyed baritone was almost startlingly beautiful at times, shocking, even, but he was not afraid to let the tone crack or grow rough sometimes too, expressive of the stresses under which Wozzeck labours, and his German diction was exceptional. Piece by piece, Wozzeck's world gets pulled apart and cracked around him, and he lumbers through it, increasingly confused and internally wounded, and Mattei projected all this brilliantly.
It is not, however, for the vocal parts that I remember Wozzeck, whether in this production or any other, and no matter how good the performances may be. It's the orchestra that matters the most, for its opulent scoring and the true lyricism of the piece. The vocal lines are meant to expose and present the text, but it's the orchestra that expresses the emotion, and never more so than in the last interlude of the third act, a shattering outpouring after Wozzeck's death. Nézet-Séguin and the Met orchestra delivered superbly, ensuring a riveting experience.
[Next : 16th January]
Metropolitan Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
I will freely admit that I find the music of the Second Viennese School difficult, and it is not something to which I turn very readily. That said, Berg is probably the most approachable of the three, and I have seen Wozzeck before, twice. Also, Mattei. I have a serious (musical) crush on Peter Mattei, who we do not get to hear often enough, and I would probably quite happily listen to him sing his way through a telephone directory, were he to be so inclined. The title role of Berg's opera is a tremendous role for a baritone, for although the opera is relatively short, it is intense, technically demanding, emotionally exhausting, usually played without interval, and Wozzeck is on stage for a good three-quarters of the proceedings. In other words, something for a first-class singer actor to really get his teeth into, and these New York performances are Mattei's first in this part.
The original play - or rather, the fragments that were all Georg Büchner left before his early death - dates originally from 1837, based on a true event that occurred a dozen years earlier. When an actual play is reconstituted from these fragments, it is 1913 by the time it receives its first performances, and Berg commences work on an opera the following year. The First World War intervenes, Berg is called up, so it is not until after the war that he is able to continue working seriously, and he completes the piece in 1922. It's that shadow of the war that director William Kentridge chose to highlight in his production.
In a short interview shown before the broadcast began, Kentridge stated that the production was set as "an anticipation, a foreboding, of the First World War". However, we see a great many images that do not so much suggest any sort of anticipation, as an actual happening. Kentridge's visuals are an extraordinary mix of charcoal drawing, surreal animations and video projection over a strange, multi-level wooden construct of ramshackle platforms and crooked walkways, and they are full of explosions of light and dark, barbed wire, dislocated figures, wounded, maimed and crippled chorus members and faces concealed by gas masks that very strongly suggest that the war is definitely going on right now.
This is a little contradictory to the actual spirit of the piece; part of the point of Wozzeck is that these are soldiers in peace-time, bound by their engagement but with nothing constructive (insofar as war can ever be considered constructive) to do, bored, disaffected and, for the ordinary private, living precariously on minimum pay with little to no chance to earn any sort of bonuses. Wozzeck has nothing, except for his common-law wife Marie and their small son. He is not the sharpest tool in the box, he is looked down upon by his superiors, his poverty is crushing, and he has nowhere to turn for support or guidance when Marie, tired of the poverty, allows herself to be distracted by the bling and swagger of the regimental drum-major. As Kentridge doesn't take the imagery as far as the trenches (this is clearly a garrison-town), it might seem that soldiers on the edge of real combat would be somewhat more focussed.
The other unusual decision Kentridge has taken is to replace the child - who has a tiny sung role in the last scene, but does appear silently earlier in the opera in a couple of scenes - with a puppet which has a gas mask for a face. The jury's still out on whether that's a good idea or not. It's difficult to connect emotionally with this rather eerie figure, and harder still to believe Marie, in particular, can have any real feeling for it, and that aspect of Marie, her love for her child, is a very significant aspect of her character. On the other hand, it's an undeniably striking image, and the very inhumanity of it reinforces the pathos of that scene right at the end, when the child, having been brutally informed of the death of his mother, merely goes on playing on his hobby-horse, too young to really understand. Visually, however, it's a very arresting production, with locations coalescing around the performers as the projected images meld and flow from one scene into another.
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| Wozzeck, Act 2, scene 4 Metropolitan Opera (Ken Howard © 2020) |
Musically, the standard was excellent, with even the smallest roles making their mark. Gerhard Siegel and Christian Van Horn were grimly comic book-ends as the Captain, ridiculous with his yelping tenor, and the portentous bass of the Doctor, while Christopher Ventris was a suitably bold and brash Drum-Major. However, the opera belongs to Wozzeck and Marie, and Peter Mattei and Elsa van den Heever brought a formidable confidence and intensity to their roles. Heever's sure and shining soprano was perhaps a little over-confident in a part that requires us to be reminded of her emotional frailty - it's hard to believe a character is insecure when she is delivered with such assurance - but at the same time the trust that confidence inspires in the listener is quite a liberating sensation.
Similarly with Mattei, whose control over the vocal demands of the role meant that you could focus on the dramatic content. Mattei's rich, honeyed baritone was almost startlingly beautiful at times, shocking, even, but he was not afraid to let the tone crack or grow rough sometimes too, expressive of the stresses under which Wozzeck labours, and his German diction was exceptional. Piece by piece, Wozzeck's world gets pulled apart and cracked around him, and he lumbers through it, increasingly confused and internally wounded, and Mattei projected all this brilliantly.
It is not, however, for the vocal parts that I remember Wozzeck, whether in this production or any other, and no matter how good the performances may be. It's the orchestra that matters the most, for its opulent scoring and the true lyricism of the piece. The vocal lines are meant to expose and present the text, but it's the orchestra that expresses the emotion, and never more so than in the last interlude of the third act, a shattering outpouring after Wozzeck's death. Nézet-Séguin and the Met orchestra delivered superbly, ensuring a riveting experience.
[Next : 16th January]