Met Live in HD screens Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck'

The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD broadcast of Alban Berg’s shocking opera “Wozzeck” will be broadcast at the Whitefish Performing Arts Center at 10:55 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 11. Sung in German with English subtitles, the total run time is only 1 hour 42 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are available at the door for $20 for adults, $5 for students, and $10 for college students.

Considered one of the most important operas of the 20th century, “Wozzeck” features a score that depicts the raging insanity of the title character, a slow-witted World War I soldier on whom a doctor has been performing weird experiments and whose common-law wife is having an affair with another man. “Wozzeck” combines music of intense emotional power with a grippingly dramatic story that still resonates with audiences today.

“Wozzeck” is the first opera by Austrian composer Alban Berg. Strongly influenced by the complex music of Richard Strauss, Berg combined the then-modern 12-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg — basically, atonal music — with the lyricism of late Romantic composers like Mahler. Its “aural chaos” perfectly reflects the societal chaos in Europe during and after World War I as well as the main character’s descent into insanity. It is highly appropriate music to accompany an opera that features sex, sadism, violent murder and suicide.

This “Wozzeck” is a new production at the Met, staged by South African artist and director William Kentridge. First famous for his prints, drawings and animated films in a modern Expressionist style, Kentridge began creating set design and directing operas about 20 years ago. HD audiences may remember his staging of Shostakovich’s The Nose and Alban Berg’s Lulu, which featured his sketches and drawings projected onto the set. “Wozzeck” will feature similar projections of his mostly gray and black charcoal sketches of bombed-out buildings and other scenes from World War I that reflect the chaos of “Wozzeck”’s tormented mind. This production of “Wozzeck” wowed the audience when it debuted at the Salzburg Festival in 2017.

In 1914, Berg was in the audience for a performance of Georg Buchner’s play “Woyzeck” that was written in the 1830s. Greatly moved by that play, Berg began writing the libretto and composing a score for his opera “Wozzeck” soon after, but World War I delayed its completion. The violence and chaos resulting from mental illness apparently existed in the 1830s when Buchner wrote the play, as well as in the years surrounding World War I when Berg composed the opera. The devastating effect of mental illness on society is an issue still relevant today.

Singing the role of the suffering title character is Swedish baritone Peter Mattei. “Wozzeck”’s wayward girlfriend Marie is sung by South African dramatic soprano Elza van den Heever, who claims to love playing “outsider characters” who stray from the mainstream. “Wozzeck”’s tormenters include the Doctor (American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn), the Captain (German tenor Gerhard Siegel), and the handsome Drum-Major who seduces Marie (British tenor Christopher Ventris). “Wozzeck”’s friend Andres is sung by English tenor Andrew Staples, and Marie’s friend Margret is sung by American mezzo Tamara Mumford. The Met’s Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts.

This new production of “Wozzeck” debuted at the Met Dec. 27, 2019, so reviews are in. The New York Classical Review may have summarized it best: “William Kentridge’s new production lit the fuse of explosiveness and burst open any artifice or phoniness .”Wozzeck” is not the usual kind of pleasure; it is beautifully made, but not beautiful; it is honest and sincere about ugly and upsetting things.”