Puppets? Yes! Wozzeck Matthias Goerne Salzburg

Alban Berg's Wozzeck  at Salzburg, with Matthias Goerne, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting the Vienna Philharmoniuc Orchestra, at last on medici.tv.  Goerne's done the role many times in the last 20 years or so, so his approach is authoritative, with searing intensity, so expressive that you almost flinch.  But flinch you should, since that's what makes for a good Wozzeck. When my son went to his first Wozzeck, he heard some in the audience chuckling. "What!" he gasped in exasperation, "If you can come out of this opera without feeling  disturbed, there's something wrong with you". For Berg's Wozzeck is the epitome of Expressionist Angst, a psychodrama that unfurls in multi-level complexity.  It is a howling scream of outrage against a system that dehumanizes and destroys all involved.  Not just Wozzeck, or Marie, but the regimented (in every way) world around them.   Everyone in this opera is a puppet of some kind,  manipulated by some unseen, invisible force beyond their control.

William Kentridge's production was created for the Haus für Mozart, a relatively small, performing space, which must magnify the impact.  On film, however, the physical darkness overwhelms. It's not easy to watch, but well worth the effort because Kentridge's reading is highly perceptive.  The abstraction of the set is disconcerting. It's as if we were within an infernal machine, where things are regulated by clockwork: odd angular planes, horizontals and diagonals, myriad tools and mechanisms.  The Captain is seen, taunting Wozzeck from above.  He's wearing a ceremonial hat and red uniform, his arms waving like a wound-up toy. Gerhard Siegel spat out the words "Haha! Haha!" with maniacal savagery.  So he's not being shaved?  Wozzeck (Matthias Goerne)  is seen bent over, grinding away.  Then you realize why the Captain's cloak is blood red.  Parallel realities, psychological truth.

Berg was writing at a time when psychological theories entranced the public imagination, and cinema was quick to capitalize on its ability to present multiple-level visual and emotional effects.  Berg, a keen movie goer,  incorporated new ideas into his score. The orchestral interludes operate like curtain changes, keeping the action swift even when drastic changes of scene are taking place.  Wozzeck exits whatever room he's been in with the Captain, into a maze of shadows, the path ahead of him narrow and skewed in zig zag form - an image which could come straight from a 20's silent movie.   Suddenly we're in the surreal world of the reed beds, where Wozzeck and Andres (Mauro Peter) are collecting reeds for fuel. The contraptions on their backs are the kind of baskets used by woodcutters in the past, which incidentally resemble straitjackets. Though we don't see the reedbeds, we sense they're there on either side of the narrow path, waiting to suck the men in and drown them. The orchestra growls ominous menace, timpani pounding, the gloom lit by will o' the wisps of high woodwind, suggesting surreal spirits.  Goerne's voice rises spookily from the darkness "Still, alles still, als wäre die Welt tot!"

The orchestra heralds another change of scene:  Marie is glimpsed, alone with her child, here seen as a puppet. And why not? Berg portrayed the child as nameless, unformed without a voice of his own, an observer of horrors who will quite possibly grow up to act out the dehumanization around him all over again.  The puppet wears a gas mask, and the puppeteer the uniform of a field nurse.  It's utterly relevant, since Berg experienced horrors in a military hospital during the First World War. The system was sick, the hospital palliative, not focused on cure.   There are many who object to the employment of a real child in the part, but there's something wrong with the kind of viewer who doesn't want a kid to witness sex.   Why not get angry about the fact that millions of kids grow up abused and neglected in reality all round us?  Perhaps Wozzeck grew up in such conditions. The cyclical nature of Berg's idiom makes it clear that cycles go on, unbroken, like the palindromes in the music.

The Drum Major (John Daszak) fascinated Marie (Asmik Grigorian) and Margret (Frances Pappas) because he seems to embody another, more glamorous world than their own. Yet he, too, is a puppet, strutting and marching in formation.  Though Marie loves her child and tries to amuse him with songs, she can't break out of the pattern of inept parenting she probably experienced herself.   Goerne's voice with its rich depth suggests more warmth and basic decency than the role strictly speaking provides, but this household isn't Happy Families.

Kentridge's staging suggests how Wozzeck seems to live his life struggling between one box and another.  Goerne sits passively while the Doctor ( Jens Larsen) prods and pokes him in the name of crackpot science. "Ah....." sings  Goerne, his voice almost rising to falsetto, suggesting pain and muffled protest.  Interestingly, Marie cries almost as shrilly before she succumbs to the Drum Major.  Moments later, she's singing fairy tales, as if nothing's happened.  The puppet, however, expresses pathos, crumpling into immobility, like a child shutting out trauma.  The Doctor and the Captain converse, but they, too, are in a psychic hell of delusion. Officers, but still puppets acting out roles they can't otherwise fill.  In comparison, Wozzeck is sane. "Man könnte Lust bekommen, sich aufzuhängen! Dann wüsste man, woran man ist!" sings Goerne, but the Captain and doctor think it's a joke.

A momentary glimpse of another puppet-child, dressed in white like the Drum Major, marching while the men in the barracks carouse.  Yet again, Berg contrasts horror with mindless banality: boozy drinking songs and the cry of the Madman  (Heinz Göhrig) the first to sense blood.   Fabulous ensemble singing - Goerne's voice rising above the ghostly sounds in the chorus.  The confrontation between the Drum Major and Wozzeck is brutal, trumpets blazing, staccato percussion, like gunfire. 
Grigorian's tiny, her voice more shrill than most Maries, so in comparison with Goerne, she's like a fragile child.  He towers over her, like a father figure, a chilling image, suggestingb that both of them were brutalized, too, in the past.  Two tiny figures in a vast landscape oif abstract black and grey with flashes of red light, like thunder (in recognition of Berg's original stage directions). The "curtain" falls in a cataclysmic scream in the orchestra, horns ablaze.   But Goerne dominates, in every way, singing with exceptional character, better even than in the past.  "Das Wassser ist Blut ! Blut!"  The Doctor and Captain, yet again, retreat in denial.

Atmosopheric playing from the Vienna Philharmonic, decidedly "more" than a Strauss orchestra. Jurowski's years of experience as an opera conductor pay off well. The harsh dissonance and swirling strings scream horror, yet also elegy.  At last we see some semblance of scenery, but it's not natural. The pool shines, but it's surrounded by broken uprights. Is it a bomb crater filled with rain and mud?  Magnificent, malevolent video projections to match the intensity in the music. One screen shows a figure - neither male nor female - relentlessly walking.  Thus Berg ends with the song "Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, Ringelreih'n!"  It is a round, yet another typically Bergian palindrome. The children's voices sound innocent but the message is sinister.  The puppet child rides a hobby horse, as mentioned in the libretto, but this time, it's made from a crutch.  The children's voices are heard from offstage. "Du ! Deinn Mutter ist tod!" they cry, cruelly. The puppet is truly alone trapped in his own dimension.  He listens, then bends his little head desolate and crestfallen.,  He may be made of wood, but he has more humanity than most of the other characters in this bleakest of operas.
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William Kentridge | Stage director, Luc De Wit | Co-stage director,Sabine Theunissen | Stage sets,
Greta Goiris | Costumes, Catherine Meyburgh | Video editor, Urs Schönebaum | Lighting, Kim Gunning | Video operator

Matthias Goerne | Wozzeck, John Daszak | Drum Major, Mauro Peter | Andres, Gerhard Siegel | Captain, Jens Larsen | Doctor, Tobias Schabel | First Apprentice, Huw Montague Rendall | Second Apprentice, Heinz Göhrig | Madman, Asmik Grigorian | Marie, Frances Pappas | Margret
Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, Wolfgang Götz | Chorus director, Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, Ernst Raffelsberger | Chorus director

 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski | Conductor

Not funny - Mahler Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt

Is Mahler's song,  Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt,  from Des Knaben Wunderhorn,  meant to be funny ?  On the surface, it's droll, but as with so much good art, it's not a good idea to judge by surface appearances.  Saint Anthony of  Padua, a contemporary of St Francis of Assisi who preached to birds, was a famous orator, with phenomenal abilities to convert the heathen. In the poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, collected by Brentano and  von Arnim, the saint arrives at an empty church. So he goes down to the river and preaches to fish instead.  The fish leap and glisten, with excitement.  "Kein Predigt niemalen, den Karpfen so g'fallen"  Nothing like a juicy sermon, even if you can't speak.Latin.  Each verse describes a different type of fish, crabs and turtles, which wouldn't happen in nature.The stylized strophic refrains are a further clue that this isn't reality.

"Fisch große, Fisch kleine, Vornehm und gemeine,
Erheben die Köpfe, Wie verständge Geschöpfe:
Auf Gottes Begehren, Die Predigt anhören."

To the devout, it's a kind of miracle, taken seriously. But, as so often, literalism is the enemy of art. Whoever crafted the poem subverts the pious image.  The minute the saint turns his back, the fish are back to their own ways.  "Spitzgoschete Hechte, die immerzu fechten" remain quarrelsome thieves. Note , too, the greedy carp, whose mouths are always open, swallowing anything they're fed,  A pointed warning for our  times when received wisdom replaces thought. . 

Mahler's setting of the poem reflects its mischief.  The markings indicate "with humour" on the piano part , its rolling rhythms suggesting that the saint's been too free with communion wine, although from what we know of the early Franciscan order, they were ascetic, not given to indulgence. It's a sly reference to Dionysius, a figure who pops up elsewhere in Mahler's work, specifically in Symphony no 3.  This humour is deceptive. "This piece is really as if nature were pulling faces and sticking its tongue out at you" (said Mahler)  "But it contains such a spine-chilling panic-like humour that one is overcome more by dismay than laughter". 

War, loss and death are recurring themes in the Wunderhorn saga. Thomas Hampson has called some of them "negative love songs" for they are neither optimistic nor sentimental. The regimentation of military life contrasts with individual freedom,  though these brief escapes through love and imagination are doomed. In death. troops of skeletons march through streets, and lovers meet, as ghosts. Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt isn't funny. It's a wail of despair, though the wit dulls the pain. 

 Think ahead to Wozzeck, where the anti-hero tries to do his best, but is destroyed by the cycle of madness around him. Can we hear in the cyclic traverses of Wozzeck, echoes of the marches in Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the repetitions in Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt ? Maybe, maybe not, but that should start you thinking. DKW and Georg Büchner's Woyzeck come from a similar vein in the Romantic Imagination. 

Furthermore, consider Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt in the context of Mahler's Symphony no 2. The long first movement may represent a funeral march, taken at a steady processional pace. From that the Ländler breezes serve a a Ruckblick on  a happy past, which will inevitably be left behind. In the third movement,  marked "In ruhig fließender Bewegung" come the references to the world of Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  The departed may be dead, physically, but Nature is working its miracles. The "Fischpredigt" passage begins with a  bang, the quirky woodwind melody leaping energetically, the strings surging with energized power.  The sermon is over, but that's not a negative thing. Now, we can move forward.  The music moves like the fish, disciples of the power of Nature to regenerate itself. Even at this point, we can think of Der Abschied, "Ewig, ewig.....".  In this context, the Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt represent transformational change, as well as the wilfulness of fish who don't change their ways. 

Hence the danger of interpreting this song too narrowly and too literally. Please also read my article "Why greedy kids in Mahler 4"  Understand and absorb the spirit of Des Knaben Wunderhorn : it's a key into Mahler's inner world.
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"Who's afraid of Alban Berg ?" ENO's new Wozzeck

Even though it's nearly 90 years old,  Alban Berg's Wozzeck can be a hard sell because it's perceived as too "modern" for some. Thus the ENO Wozzeck at the Coliseum is an ideal introduction to the opera, to Berg and indeed to modern music in general. The director, Carrie Cracknell, is a theatre director new to opera, so she approaches the opera as a drama rather than as an opera.  We're reminded that Berg's Wozzeck was based on Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck. Here, the abstract complexities of Berg's score become almost incidental. Still, this Wozzeck is engaging and should prove an excellent introduction for audiences new to the opera.

Cracknell's Wozzeck is a concrete concept, solidly grounded in the present: Wozzeck (Leigh Melrose) is a hard-working squaddie with psychiatric problems who murders Marie (Sara Jakubiak) in a sordid domestic dispute. We could be watching a film, or a social documentary. This is perfectly valid. Many ordinary lives are just as tragic, but they don't get commemorated in great art or music. The set, designed by Tom Scutt, is cluttered, a visual metaphor for Wozzeck's disordered mind.  The structure doesn't change, but action moves from compartment to compartment. Each "room" lights up as needed. Connections are minimal.  The military is an enclosed, authoritarian environment. Wozzeck is trapped, by the set, by the system and by his own mind.

A small boy (Harry Polden) appears very early on in this production. At first he's anonymous, holding a gun pointed at Wozzeck. Berg's stage directions place the child in the frame while Marie and the Drum Major (Bryan Register) have their tryst.  He also appears in the final scene, taunted by other children. But his presence is implicit. Wozzeck may not be the father of the child, but the child is the father of the man. Wozzeck's tragedy began long before the show began. It will repeat, perhaps, with the orphaned child.

Wozzeck's delusions about mushrooms, smells and blood are evidence that he's mad. When Leigh Melrose sings "It reeks!" his voices rises to manic pitch. Given the circumstances he's in, anyone would have psychiatric issues. Wozzeck works hard "for Marie" but for Berg, his abject humiliation goes much deeper. Berg developed his ideas during a stint in the Austrian military during the First World War. He connects Wozzeck's doggedness to the animal-like subservience of the populace to their masters. Arguably, Wozzeck is less insane than the Captain (Tom Randle) or the Doctor (James Morris). Indeed, the Doctor is the craziest of all, with his crackpot theories, emotional blackmail and selective double-think. But he's a symbol of authority. Perhaps it's significant that Berg spent time in a military hospital. James Morris looks wonderful and sings well, but the political edge in this production is nil. When the emphasis is on working class Wozzeck's madness, the Captain and Doctor get off the hook.

As social drama, this Wozzeck is top notch. As a musical experience, it's much less perceptive. Berg's  music is every bit as intricate and maze-like as Wozzeck's mind. Edward Gardner is most impressive conducting the big, dramatic "curtains" Berg writes into the music, a foretaste of the music we would now associate with the movies. There was a TV series called "Dragnet" which used the theme Berg uses to "close" the scene on Wozzeck's death.  Gardner makes that music explode. He's a lot less inclined towards subtleties, like the intricate interweaving of theme and ideas. On the other hand, this wasn't a production where subtlety mattered, so he can be forgiven.  Singing isn't something which can be measured objectively, either. Sara Jakubiak's voice  reached wild crescendi, which suggested the emotional strain Marie was going through but didn't bring out the warmth that Berg wrote into the part. Oddly, what came over strongly was the way the shape of the Coliseum distorts the sound coming from the pit. The orchestra is spread out over the breadth of the stage, so the bassoons and brass dominate more than they would in a more conventional seating plan.

Next season, Keith Warner's Berg Wozzeck is revived at the Royal Opera House. It's set in what looks like a laboratory, lit with extreme, unnatural light. Perhaps we're in the Doctor's mind. "O, meine Theorie! " where obsessiveness overrides humanity. Carrie Cracknell stages Wozzeck's death over a diningb table, which is perfectly fair enough: it's hard to show drowned corpses. Warner solves the problem by having Wozzeck jump into a glass tank, where he floats  helplessly like yet another of the crackpot Doctor's lab experiments. Warner's Wozzeck is truly exceptional, but quite demanding. Cracknell's ENO Wozzeck is excellent preparation.