wozzeck
Alban Berg
Wozzeck
Opera in three acts (1925)
- Music
- Alban Berg
- Libretto
- Alban Berg
- Conductor
- Michael Schønwandt
- Director
- Christoph Marthaler
- Co-stage director
- Joachim Rathke
- Wozzeck
- Johannes Martin Kränzle
- Tambour-Major
- Štefan Margita
- Andrès
- Nicky Spence
- Hauptmann
- Stephan Rügamer
- Doktor
- Kurt Rydl
- Erster Handwerksbursch
- Mikhail Timoshenko
- Zweiter Handwerksbursch
- Tomasz Kumiega
- Der Narr
- Rodolphe Briand
- Marie
- Gun-Brit Barkmin
- Margret
- Eve-Maud Hubeaux
- Ein Soldat
- Fernando Velasquez
- Set design
- Anna Viebrock
- Costume design
- Anna Viebrock
- Lighting design
- Olaf Winter
- Dramaturgy
- Malte Ubenauf
- Chorus master
- Alessandro Di Stefano
Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine / Choeur d’enfants de l’Opéra national de Paris
about
"Our kind don’t get a chance in this world or the next. If we go to heaven, they’ll put us to work on the thunder!"Georg Büchner, Woyzeck
Alban Berg discovered Büchner’s Woyzeck in 1914. Highly impressed, he began work adapting the play with a view to writing an opera. The work had its premiere in Berlin in 1925 after a legendary number of rehearsals –137– and quickly earned its reputation as a masterpiece of 20th century music. Separated and fragmented, the scenes combine in a series of tableaux to tell the story of Wozzeck, an ordinary soldier whose only solace is the love of his companion Marie. However, the latter’s fidelity is not unfailing and Wozzeck is haunted by torment. His officers and comrades in arms do little to improve the situation. The omnipresent tension in this profoundly romantic work unifies the fifteen scenes with their complex tonalities alternating between Verist notes and the force of ritualised actions. The interplay of musical citations and the balance between tonality and atonality underline a disquietingly authentic portrait of humanity where drama attains the status of myth. The work entered the Paris Opera’s repertoire relatively late in 1963. Christoph Marthaler’s production provides an atmosphere of contemporaneity strongly accentuated by the choice of a single set, where the men’s despair is submerged in Berg’s dearly sought-after sobriety.
Gallery Media coverageRelated articles
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Berg, Boulez, Barrault, 1963
First Production of Wozzeck at the Paris Opera — By Octave
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Podcast Wozzeck
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" by France Musique — By Judith Chaine
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Wozzeck the rough diamond
Alban Berg’s great masterpiece — By Elise Petit and Pauline Andrieu (Illustration)
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“A clasic Wozzeck”
Christoph Marthaler’s production through the eyes of the press — By Octave
