Wozzeck, Opera by A. Berg
Alban Berg's expressionist opera, Wozzeck, comes to the stage of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. The Austrian composer decided to set the stage play of the same name to music after he attended a performance of it shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Berg composed it throughout the war years, eventually finishing it in 1922. The three-act, fifteen-scene operatic version of Wozzeck was subsequently first performed on 14 December 1925 at the Berlin State Opera to widespread acclaim.
Berg wrote both the libretto and the music for Wozzeck. It is based on a drama written by the German playwright Georg Büchner, originally entitled Woyzeck, but which was produced on stage as Wozzeck due to a misreading. Berg highlighted the themes that were particularly important to expressionist writers at the time, such as the significance of nightmares, mental alienation and brutal violence. What's more, the Austrian wrote the opera systematically such that distinct musical forms were scored for each scene, thereby reflecting the formal structure of Western instrumental music in a dramatic way. Certain scenes in the opera can be identified as a rhapsody, a march or a rondo, among other musical forms.
The plot of Wozzeck – both the opera and the stage play – is based on a true event surrounding a soldier named Johann Christian Woyzeck. In the opening scene, which takes the suite as its musical form, the title character has been tasked with shaving a superior officer who urges him to go slower. The officer looks down on his junior, claiming Wozzeck lacks morals because he has had a child out of wedlock. Wozzeck says that morality is something poor people can ill afford. Despite his confident retort, the young soldier is suffering from nightmarish visions which he later confides to his girlfriend, Marie.
Marie and her friend, Margret, see a marching band and notice a handsome Drum Major, a man who clearly has designs on Marie. When Wozzeck is teased about Marie, his mental strife seems to worsen. Later, the young soldier experiences some terrifying visions but he is not hallucinating when Marie and the Drum Major are seen dancing together. Jealousy and violence follow with Wozzeck dancing with, and later insulting, Margret. Can Marie and Wozzeck's relationship survive, given the traumas that play out?
This staging of Wozzeck at Florence's Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino highlights Berg's style, one that doesn't focus on traditional operatic forms, such as arias and duets, but instead creates distinctive musical structures with each passing scene.