Wozzeck hits a high note

This latest version of Alban Berg's opera weaves a highly moving and effective tale with the flair that one would expect of this genre. The opera is based on the true story of Christian Woyzeck, who was accused and convicted of killing a girl, although, with hindsight, it appears he may have been insane, as he suffered from frequent hallucinations. The plot here tells of the alienation of a man condemned by the prejudices of his fellow citizens and driven to murder by the betrayal of the mother of his child. 

The scenography is evocative, the music brilliantly carries the story and lets soar the passions, and the dialogue is elegant in its simplicity, yet powerful in its intellectual depth. All of this is enough to make it a great work; what makes it a masterpiece is the fact that this beautiful presentation contains lessons on human nature, modern science, religion and alienation that are fundamental to our understanding of ourselves as people and citizens.

In the opera, we are confronted with the person of Wozzeck, a castrated man, a proletarian who at every turn is frustrated by the choice foisted upon him by bourgeois society, namely between bread and morality, and Wozzeck is unable to choose morality before bread. Sadly - by making this worldly choice - Wozzeck does not spare himself proverbial crucifixion. However, the crucifixion of Wozzeck, his death, is not the crucifixion of the Christ but in a sense the restoration of the primordial crucifix as the means with which to deal with the rabble, the criminal, the immoral - the forgotten and, by the standards of their times, the low.

Just as the social-economic system surrounding Wozzeck prevents him from being 'moral' by tying the good of his family to the extent of his submission to prejudice, so too it is the very framework that presumably ought to bring Wozzeck the greatest happiness - the love of a man for a woman - that is his undoing. Thus we have the operatic anti-hero in his horrifying splendor.

Peter S Rieth

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