Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Alban Berg’s score darkly shimmers in William Kentridge’s disorienting new production of WOZZECK at the Met

• By drediman
• January 8, 2020
• No Comments

William Kentridge’s new production of “Wozzeck” by Alban Berg at the Metropolitan Opera. Photo by Ruth Walz.

Last night, I attended a performance of the new production of Alban Berg’s renegade one-act opera Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera. The staging is by renowned South African visual artist William Kentridge, who previously staged Berg’s Lulu and Shostakovach’s The Nose at the Met to great acclaim. Mr. Kentridge deploys the same bag of tricks to Wozzeck – an opera about a soldier who is driven to madness and murders his adulterous wife – to disorienting, intoxicating effect.

The director’s surreal, nightmarish concept – complete with his trademark lopsided perspectives, collage-like animated projections, handmade puppetry, and overstuffed visual palette – is a good match for Berg’s expressionistic score and updates the opera to the eve of World War I.  It’s an interpretation that places the audience right into Wozzeck’s unstable head, heightening the notion that the unremarkable, impressionable title character is the victim of a debauched, disintegrating society. Mr. Kentridge’s world is a toxic, murkily-lit wasteland that’s already de-humanized and devastated even before the war has begun to ravage Europe.

As the guileless antihero Wozzeck, Peter Mattei continues his exploration of psychologically and emotionally extreme roles. Indeed, who could forget his searing Amfortas in the Met’s most recent performances of Wagner’s Parsifal? I’m happy to report that the smooth-voiced baritone was equally memorable here, giving a transparent performance that felt totally inhabited. As his cheating wife, unsavory captain, and depraved doctor, respectively, soprano Elza van den Heever, tenor Gerhard Siegel, and bass-baritone Christopher Ventris gave caustic performances that were notable for being convincingly sung in character.

But the real star of the evening was maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s disarmingly clear, expressive, and altogether stunning rendition of Berg’s famously atonal score. The performance was a triumph for the exciting, enthusiastic music director, and under his baton, the excellent Met Orchestra rarely sounded finer. They gave Berg’s difficult, restless score a dark shimmer that drew me so completely into Berg and Kentridge’s disturbed and disturbing world.

RECOMMENDED

WOZZECK
Opera
The Metropolitan Opera
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through January 22