Spinning in its own orbit, as it seems on every fresh encounter, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925) resembles no other opera. Voices sing, speak, shout in myriad ways, exactingly specified by the composer. The score flickers through every style, a lurching waltz or honky-tonk piano parachuting in to save you when Berg’s atonal harmonies have left you stranded. Based on Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, the plot is blunt and brutal. A soldier murders the mother of his child, then drowns himself.
Bad stagings of the opera are rare, but some reach different levels of expression. The new production at the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano, directed by Deborah Warner, is in that category. On first night cast, chorus, orchestra, sounded faultless. From onstage bands to section solos to the voluptuous interludes that shape the work, every aspect was compulsive, shadowy, glinting.
