Theodor Adorno had to sympathize with Alban Berg late into the night on December 14, 1925, after the premiere of “Wozzeck” at the Berlin State Opera.
The problem was not that Berg’s first opera had been a disaster, that this unknown pupil of Arnold Schoenberg was about to be sent back to his former anonymity and abject poverty.
The problem for Berg was that his musically abrasive, politically ruthless work—based on a Georg Büchner play he’d seen in 1914 and immediately thought of setting to music—was such a triumph that he began to doubt its true value. from work. Adorno later recalled “literally comforting him about his success.”
A success “Wozzeck” has remained in the 100 years since Berg finished revising the manuscript on July 16, 1922. The most radical opera of its time, still sounding remarkably modern in its centenary, became one of the most influential operas of the 20th century, along with works such as Strauss’ Salome and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. .
With its taut, fast-changing cinematic structure and its omnivorous stylistic appetite, not to mention its use of fleeting, devastating moments of tonality amid the precise constructions of its largely atonal score, the argument could easily be made. that “Wozzeck” turned out to be, in fact, the most influential of them all.
Just in time comes a series of performances, celebrating an opera that might be too bad to think about celebrating. A William Kentridge staging that played at the Met in 2019 will run through March 30 at the Paris Opera, with conductor Susanna Malkki at the helm, before arriving in Barcelona in May, with Matthias Goerne as his Wozzeck. A new Simon Stone production with the baritone Christian Gerhaher in the title role opens on March 21 at the Vienna State Opera. And on Tuesday, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra give a concert performance at Carnegie Hall, with Christine Goerke as Marie.
Part of the overwhelming power of “Wozzeck” comes from the plot. In 15 short scenes, Berg recounts the degradation and demise of Wozzeck, a needy soldier who was mistreated by his captain, on which a doctor experimented and suspected that his partner, Marie, was unfaithful to a drum major. Wozzeck, insane, kills Marie and drowns herself. The curtain falls on their son, who is swinging on a hobby horse. Whether he will escape the fate of his parents – and the general forces that so inevitably fall on what Wozzeck calls “we poor people” – remains unclear.
What could explain the staying power of Berg’s opera? And what has his influence really been? Here are edited excerpts from interviews with artists dear to the work.
Yuval Sharon, director
“Wozzeck” was the first opera that made me believe in opera as a viable art form. It’s this huge musical expression of the lives of truly powerless people. The thought that opera could tell stories that are not just the stories of a privileged position, but could really represent another point of view, and this with an incredible imagination, opened the possibilities of what opera can still be.
It’s one of the most compassionate operas I know. It’s not the Beethoven model. It doesn’t speak to that ambitious quality that some of us think music captures so well. There’s no salvation in the piece, and that’s exactly what’s so powerful and urgent about it. It will not be the horns that announce a miraculous victory over tyranny, as in ‘Fidelio’. It will have to be us, in the audience, who have to stand up for Wozzeck.
Christian Gerhaher, baritone
Büchner was much earlier than Karl Marx in his ideas, but they were similar. Büchner was not the founder of communism, but he was honest about the difficulties poor people face in creating a normal life. This is moving, without being too ideological.
You have a work that deals with a horrific subject. What’s going on is terrible, but the point as a singer and also in the audience is that you have this amazing joy of seeing thoughts in words and music in such a precise way. It is without a doubt the masterpiece of the 20th century. Nothing is decoration; nothing is negligible; every tone is important; every word is important. It is the essence of a fast moving world, namely modernity.
Brett Dean, composer
What always struck me about “Wozzeck” was that, while it emerged from a score full of compositional thought that was revolutionary in its own right in music history, Berg was the one who married process with engagement, married head with heart — or belly.
Despite the strictness of studying with Schoenberg, he realized that you have to go where you need to go. For example, the fact that in the intermezzo just before the end he ingeniously goes back to this early piano sketch in D minor, and realizes that we need it, here and now. From the point of view of a modernist, expressionist language, he is able, willing and happy to embrace whatever he needs at the time.
Susanna Malkki, conductor
People talk about how hard it is, and it’s not completely untrue, but I think the main thing is that it’s incredibly dense, and rich and deep. You have different layers that make it interesting every time you hear it. I’ve been personally surprised, since I finally got the score and started studying it, to see how much warmth and beauty and even humor there is. The piece is terrifyingly perfect.
Berg is, of course, incredibly smart. But when the story becomes unbearable towards the end in its sadness, he simplifies the music, giving us the space to really feel the pain and the fate and all that. He gives us time to process everything, and then of course comes the final blow. It’s just absolutely awful.
David T. Little, composer
It was the first piece I came across that I felt really looked at the harder parts of life, and didn’t look away. I had always been drawn to the idea of opera, but watching Mozart and Verdi felt like we were dealing with characters who weren’t real people, at least not to me, with my background. When I first saw ‘Wozzeck’, these were ordinary people engaged in extraordinary things, and in Wozzeck’s case, a world that really presses on this character.
I remember being shocked by that big, unison B crescendo towards the end, only to feel like it was so inescapable. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 12-minute crescendo at the end of my opera “Dog Days” is a B-quarter; it is a tribute or reference to that moment. There is life before that part, and life after.
Matthias Goerne, baritone
What Berg made of Büchner’s play, I think is the most perfect piece we have, in terms of story, the characters. Everyone is completely in shape in their character and you immediately find out what kind of person they are, and about their relationship to everyone else.
You have two different levels. You have this very depressing underdog, Wozzeck, who is in this position of slavery. He constantly needs money. He may sense that something is not right in his relationship. He’s getting crazier and out of control. On the other hand, it is a tragic love story. He becomes a murderer. You have empathy, you feel something for him – but in the end he kills a human being.
Christine Goerke, soprano
I find Marie such a complicated and contradictory character. Like so many of us right now, she tries to find joy in simple things in what seems like an indifferent world. She doesn’t have much, so she tries to make the best of what she has. She seizes on her moments of joy and later feels guilty about it. She feels she must do better, she must be better, she must be content with what she has, and if she can, it may help her avoid judgment. She is a mother who struggles to maintain her own identity as a woman. I’ve been this woman. Depending on the day I am this woman.
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
What Alban Berg did to make the story so compact and emotionally so intense – I think people to this day are completely captivated by the story, especially at the end. We always have a huge empathy for kids, and when that kid comes out and “Hopp, hopp!” sing that’s the last point, if you have human emotions, when you start crying in that opera.
Schoenberg, when he wrote 12-tone music, never broke the rules he had set. Berg did so because Berg was such a genius at the theater that, like Mozart, he knew that sometimes you have to break the rules to have more impact.
Missy Mazzoli, composer
This was the first opera I saw live, at the Met in 1999, when I was 18. It woke me up to the idea that I now see as one of the superpowers of opera, which is to show us the darkest sides of human nature. In those 90 minutes I had this visceral experience of recognizing my own dark side, and allowing myself to go there because I was in the safe, velvet box of the theater.
In a way I’m shocked that it isn’t Lake influential. I wish opera had continued on this experimental path. “Wozzeck” was not an outlier; it was celebrated and performed everywhere. Berg lived off it for a long time and had the honor of being indicted by the Nazis. Now the opera has withdrawn – for the most part; there are many exceptions – to a safer, tastier space. Part of me wishes we could bring back that momentum of the “degenerate” art.