You have heard of a watch list. I myself have a do-not-watch list, concerning opera. At the top of it is Wozzeck<\/i>, the opera by Alban Berg, which premiered in 1925. Why? Isn\u2019t it a masterpiece? Of course. But the story is cruel, unbearably cruel, for some of us with maybe weak constitutions.<\/p>\n
I brought this up with Lorin Maazel, the late conductor, in a 2009 interview<\/a>. He had mentioned Berg and this led to Wozzeck<\/i>\u2014and the idea of \u201cunwatchable operas.\u201d Of Puccini\u2019s Madama Butterfly<\/i>, Maazel said this: \u201cWhen I conduct that opera, I can\u2019t look at the stage for the last five minutes\u2014when she gets ready to disembowel herself. I can\u2019t bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n In any case, manning up, I went to the Metropolitan Opera House last night for Wozzeck<\/i>. Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, the Met\u2019s music director, was in the pit. When he took over a few years ago, I set a rule: No fair comparing him with Levine<\/i>. (James Levine was music director of the Met for forty years: from 1976 to 2016.) You must leave Levine out of your criticism. N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin does not need that ghost over his shoulder<\/i>. Yet I could not help thinking of Levine last night, because Wozzeck<\/i> was one of \u201chis\u201d operas.<\/p>\n Now, Levine had no specialty. (It\u2019s odd to write of him in the past tense, by the way, as though he weren\u2019t living and breathing. It\u2019s just that he is out of conducting, for reasons written about extensively.) He was a compleat conductor. Baroque, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Debussy\u2014whatever it was, he excelled in it. He excelled in the opera pit and on the symphonic podium. But he had a special association with Wozzeck<\/i> and other outstanding products of the Second Viennese School.<\/p>\n Forget about that, though: Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin conducted Wozzeck<\/i> superbly. He delivered a performance worthy of the Met.<\/p>\n It is hard to think of an opera more orchestral than Wozzeck<\/i>. Strauss\u2019s Rosenkavalier<\/i> comes to mind (and, by coincidence, the Met is currently staging that opera, too). (Its conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, was in attendance at Wozzeck<\/i> last night.) The orchestra is of utmost importance in Wozzeck<\/i>. I think of the singers onstage as like members of the orchestra, rather than stars accompanied by the orchestra.<\/p>\n You can take that concept too far\u2014someone has to do the acting, for instance\u2014but I hope you know what I mean. The singing parts and the instrumental parts all belong to the musical whole. The oboe is one instrument; the soprano voice is another.<\/p>\n Berg\u2019s score contains many types of music, many musical forms, not excluding a triple fugue. There is a military marching band, and a tavern band, to boot. You hear refined \u201cclassical\u201d music and then, in suggestions or bursts, coarser \u201cpopular\u201d music. Yet all notes are unified, by the amazing Berg. And this unity was made clear by Maestro N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin.<\/p>\n He conducted with precision and confidence. The playing was transparent\u2014so much so, you could practically have written the score down. N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin allowed the music to have its momentum. There was no unwelcome rubato, no cutesiness, no \u201cpersonal stamp.\u201d Just good, honest, knowledgeable conducting. Frankly, I forgot about the conducting and simply listened to the music. That is a great gift, given to a listener by a conductor.<\/p>\n Was the orchestra too loud? I think of Gerald Moore, the famous accompanist, who titled one of his memoirs Am I Too Loud?<\/i> Occasionally, yes\u2014but, you won\u2019t be surprised to hear, in light of what I said above, I didn\u2019t mind. The voices and the (other) instruments were all in the air.<\/p>\n Wozzeck<\/i> resembles a concerto for orchestra, with many first-desk players having solo turns. There is no end of important players, right down to the contrabassoonist (and don\u2019t forget the xylophonist). But maybe I could mention just one. The concertmaster, David Chan, contributed sweet, nuanced, fitting lines.<\/p>\n Peter Mattei, the Swedish baritone, was Wozzeck. He was suitably wretched\u2014lost, abused, and wretched. His beautiful singing in the upper register made the character all the more pitiable (murderous though he turns). Marie was Elza van den Heever, the South African soprano. I sometimes speak of voices as having a \u201cribbon\u201d: a wide ribbon or a thin ribbon. Van den Heever emitted a strong, thin ribbon of sound, penetrating the orchestra and the house. I enjoyed her singing, and she reflected the struggle within her character: Marie knows right from wrong, adding to the tragedy of her life\u2014a life cut nastily short.<\/p>\n The cast includes an assortment of other singers, and they were all game, if not exemplary. All were committed to their parts. The child\u2014Marie\u2019s son\u2014was represented by a puppet. The first puppet-child at the Met since Anthony Minghella\u2019s Butterfly<\/i>?<\/p>\n Last night saw a new production of Wozzeck<\/i>\u2014new to the Met, at least. It was a hit of the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2017. The production comes from William Kentridge, the South African artist, who is by now something of a Met veteran. He did The Nose<\/i>\u2014Shostakovich\u2019s opera\u2014in the 2009\u201310 season. I wrote<\/a>,<\/p>\n Perhaps the star of the Met\u2019s Nose<\/i> is the production . . . It is busy and farcical, filled with video clips, cartoons, poster art, and other devices. The production matches the score and the libretto to a T\u2014which should be the aim of a production, though that is a very old-school notion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the 2015\u201316 season came a Kentridge Lulu<\/i>\u2014Lulu<\/i> being Alban Berg\u2019s other opera. This production, too, fit its opera to a T.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very busy, like the score. It\u2019s cockeyed, off-kilter, like the score. It\u2019s crude and offensive, but also sophisticated\u2014like the opera. The look of the production is Weimary. The whole production conveys an atmosphere of screwy amorality. This Lulu<\/i> is \u201call too human,\u201d as they say, intensely human. It\u2019s appalling and fascinating. In a very unusual touch, there are subtitles on the stage\u2014sitting right there on the stage\u2014which is maybe a little distracting at first. But, as the opera wore on, I got to appreciate the closeness of the words to the action. This is a matter of taste.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (For that review, go here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n There are subtitles in the Wozzeck<\/i> production too\u2014which I appreciated. Can you ignore them if you want to? I think so.<\/p>\n This Wozzeck<\/i> is set in \u201can apocalyptic pre\u2013World War I environment,\u201d to quote Met publicity. (Berg wrote the opera during the war and thereafter.) Yet there are flash-forwards, and probably flashes back, too. I\u2019m not entirely sure. Like other Kentridge productions, this one is very, very busy. Distractingly so? Not really, in my judgment. You are looking at a theater piece. I don\u2019t claim to have caught everything Kentridge was doing\u2014was that the Hindenburg<\/i> floating by? some ordinary WWI<\/span> zeppelin?\u2014but I know that everything\u2014every flicker, every flash\u2014was thought through and meaningful.<\/p>\n If I have one criticism, it is this: Kentridge is making Big Statements, concerning War and Peace and the Human Condition. I think it is probably enough to concentrate on the human beings at hand\u2014and let the audience draw larger conclusions, if they wish.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, there is no doubt of Kentridge\u2019s brilliance, or Berg\u2019s. The Met audience was treated to an unusual show last night. And Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin\u2019s musical leadership was key.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On <\/i>Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1258,"featured_media":120384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[472],"tags":[2139,760,666,712,1077],"dispatch-city":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fb0bff29d65","label":"Participants","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"object","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"featured_image_credits":{"simple_value_formatted":"A scene from William Kentridge\u2019s production of Berg's <\/i>Wozzeck. Photo: Ken Howard \/ Met Opera<\/i>","value_formatted":"A scene from William Kentridge\u2019s production of Berg's <\/i>Wozzeck. Photo: Ken Howard \/ Met Opera<\/i>","value":"A scene from William Kentridge\u2019s production of Berg's <\/i>Wozzeck. Photo: Ken Howard \/ Met Opera<\/i>","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_651c536113a8e","label":"Featured Image Credits","name":"featured_image_credits","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":0,"_name":"featured_image_credits","_valid":1}},"enable_paywall":{"simple_value_formatted":"No","value_formatted":false,"value":0,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_66009169342f2","label":"Enable Paywall","name":"enable_paywall","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"true_false","value":null,"menu_order":2,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"message":"","default_value":0,"ui":0,"ui_on_text":"","ui_off_text":"","_name":"enable_paywall","_valid":1}}},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Jay Nordlinger","author_link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/author\/jay-nordlinger\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/WOZ_1544a-300x228.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/WOZ_1544a-scaled.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Dispatch<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Dispatch<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Alban Berg<\/a>","Classical Music<\/a>","Metropolitan Opera<\/a>","Opera<\/a>","Wozzeck<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Alban Berg<\/span>","Classical Music<\/span>","Metropolitan Opera<\/span>","Opera<\/span>","Wozzeck<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 4 years ago","modified":"Updated 7 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on December 28, 2019","modified":"Updated on October 3, 2023"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on December 28, 2019 12:29 pm","modified":"Updated on October 3, 2023 1:53 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"A scene from William Kentridge\u2019s production of Berg's <\/i>Wozzeck. Photo: Ken Howard \/ Met Opera<\/i>","series_order":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["author_meta","featured_img","jetpack_sharing_enabled","jetpack_featured_media_url","coauthors","tax_additional","comment_count","relative_dates","absolute_dates","absolute_dates_time","featured_img_caption","series_order","jetpack-related-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120383,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113927\/revisions\/120383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113927"},{"taxonomy":"dispatch-city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dispatch-city?post=113927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}