Cheers for the Hero, Followed by an Opera

by Anthony Tomassini

THE NEW YORK TIMES

James Levine has been given countless ovations during 40 years with the Metropolitan Opera. But the enthusiastic round of applause and bravos he received from the audience at the Met on Wednesday night when he appeared in the pit to conduct the season’s first performance of Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” must have been especially gratifying. He had last performed at the house nearly two months before, conducting Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale,” and it was a relief to all, it seemed, to have him back in action.

Mr. Levine’s continuing health problems, primarily chronic back pain, compelled him last month to cancel the rest of his performances this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and to give his notice of resignation as music director. And he curtailed his spring schedule at the Met.

Mr. Levine made it a priority to conduct “Wozzeck,” a work he reveres and has performed stunningly over the years, the last time in the 2005-6 season. But I never heard him give a better account of this harrowing, deeply moving opera than this one. Mr. Levine must still be coping with back pain; he did not make it to the stage at the end for bows. Instead, he simply waved to the audience from the pit.

On the podium, though, sitting in his conductor’s chair with his arms flailing, he seemed inspired. Could the extra urgency and sweep on this occasion, and tempos slightly faster than those I remember from his earlier performances, have been motivated by a determination to prove that he was still a dynamic maestro? Whatever the cause, the results were thrilling.

Mr. Levine still drew plenty of depth, spaciousness and glow from the orchestra during the despairing passages of Berg’s gravely beautiful atonal score, first performed in Berlin in 1925. But his work had greater overall shape and more prickly energy on this night than in years past. Played without breaks, “Wozzeck” lasts just an hour and 40 minutes. The time passed without notice; the score has seldom seemed so compact and inexorable.

Mr. Levine was on the podium when the Met’s spare, grim Mark Lamos production — with sets that are all shapes, shadows and tall slanted walls — was introduced in 1997. The staging remains effective. The strong cast was headed by the baritone Alan Held as Wozzeck, an oppressed, impoverished soldier. Mr. Held’s full-bodied sound combined with his haggard, pitiful look made his Wozzeck seem especially delusional and dangerous.

As Marie, Wozzeck’s common-law wife and the mother of his little boy, the mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier was magnificent. Though her voice may not be glamorous, it is warm, humane and poignantly expressive. Singing the haunting lullaby to her child (the sweet-faced John Albert) Ms. Meier brought suppleness and earthy colorings to Berg’s elusive vocal lines. Yet during Marie’s throes of despair or, when the handsome Drum Major tempted her, desire, Ms. Meier’s voice sliced through the orchestra with burnished power. When Marie confessed her infidelity and Wozzeck was about to slap her, Ms. Meier’s Marie rashly defied him. She would rather have a knife in the belly, she made clear, than let Wozzeck lay a hand on her. Even hobbled by guilt and humiliated by poverty, this Marie was going to maintain her dignity.

The Australian tenor Stuart Skelton, in his Met debut, was an imposing, bright-voiced Drum Major. The tenor Russell Thomas brought out the decency of Andres, Wozzeck’s fellow soldier. The tenor Gerhard Siegel was aptly sniveling as the weirdly giddy Captain who berates Wozzeck for his faulty morals. And the booming bass Walter Fink held the stage as the pompous Doctor, who pays Wozzeck to be a subject of quack medical experiments.

But inevitably, this was Mr. Levine’s night. I will not soon forget the pulsing intensity and surging sound he brought to the orchestral interlude near the end Act III, after the scene in which Wozzeck, panicked over having killed Marie in a fit, drowns in a pond while trying to hide his knife; or the eerie playfulness Mr. Levine teased from the short final scene, in which neighborhood children curtly tell Marie’s boy that his mother is dead.

After the remaining “Wozzeck” performances, next up for Mr. Levine at the Met is the new production of Wagner’s “Walküre.” If he has to restrict his schedule to what he can realistically do, or redefine his role with the company, so be it, as long as he can keep turning in performances like this.

James Levine Leads Harrowing “Wozzeck” at Met

by Mike Silverman

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALAN HELD SHINES IN A JAMES LEVINE-LED ‘WOZZEK’ AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

Long a champion of Alban Berg's two operas, James Levine was forced to cancel his performances of "Lulu" at the Metropolitan Opera last season while
recovering from back surgery.

This year, despite lingering frail health, the Met's music director was determined to be on the podium for "Wozzeck," even though it meant cutting back elsewhere in his schedule.

On Wednesday night, he led the first of four performances of this harrowing work, and it was, simply, one of the great nights of the season. The triumph was due not only to Levine's conducting and inspired playing by the orchestra, but also to a superb cast led by Alan Held in the title role and Waltraud Meier as his faithless lover, Marie.

Wozzeck, which premiered in Berlin in 1925, is based on a play by Georg Buechner written nearly a century earlier. It tells in 15 brief scenes the tale of a common soldier driven to madness, murder and death by the merciless forces of society.

Held, with his tall, sinewy frame and wide-eyed stare, looked the perfect embodiment of the alienated Wozzeck. Held's voice is strong enough to cut through Berg's heavy orchestrations without having to resort to shouting, and it was a pleasure to hear the melodic line shaped with such attention to detail. This fine American baritone has never quite achieved stardom at the Met, but he has made this role his own.

Meier, looking astonishingly young for a woman of 55, gave us a Marie who seems doomed from the start, wracked by guilt and fear even as she takes pleasure in an affair with the preening Drum Major. Vocally, there were some hard-pressed high notes and loss of power in the middle register, but these blemishes hardly mattered amid the warmth and vitality of her overall performance.

The many supporting roles were entrusted to first-rate singing actors.

Tenor Gerhard Siegel bellowed with marvelous gusto as the pompous Captain; bass Walter Fink riveted the attention as the gleefully sadistic Doctor; and Stuart Skelton made an impressive debut in the heldentenor like role of the Drug Major. Also worthy of note were tenor Russell Thomas as Wozzeck's friend, Andres; baritone Richard Bernstein as the First Apprentice, and mezzo-soprano Wendy White as Marie's neighbor, Margret.

The production by Mark Lamos, new in 1997, remains effective in its use of shadows and lighting to suggest the hallucinations from which Wozzeck increasingly suffers. Robert Israel's abstract sets rely on slanted walls and steel girders to create a stark, unforgiving world.

Most of all it was Levine's impassioned shaping of Berg's score — atonal yet filled with gorgeous melodic fragments and themes — that made the night so memorable. The great orchestral interlude that follows Wozzeck's death built with a rare precision to its shattering climax.

At the end, Levine remained at the podium. As the cast took their bows on stage, he turned to face the audience, beaming to acknowledge the thunderous
ovation.

Levine Returns, Met Soldiers On

by James Jordan

THE NEW YORK POST

Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” about a bullied soldier’s descent into madness, is one of the grimmer operas around. Yet it was cause for jubilation Wednesday night when Met music director James Levine finally returned to the podium.

The back problems that sidelined him for more than a month — forcing him to resign from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and cancel half his Met assignments — seemed not to hamper him.

With broad, expansive gestures, he led an elegantly detailed reading of this 1925 psychodrama, which featured Waltraud Meier’s volcanic portrayal of Wozzeck’s mistress, Marie.

She deployed her weathered mezzo with intelligent craft but never skimped on raw emotion, whether grunting in a lusty hookup with a new lover or guiltily reading the Bible to her child.

To the long, demanding title role, Alan Held brought a muscular bass-baritone and a terrific look, hulking and bony-faced. But his singing and acting seemed calculated alongside Meier’s mesmerizing performance.

In a smashing debut, towering heldentenor Stuart Skelton tossed off high notes like grenades as the thuggish Drum Major. Less effective were Wozzeck’s cruel superior officers, tenor Gerhard Siegel as the Captain and bass Walter Fink as the Doctor. Despite strong voices, they lacked dramatic flair, spending most of the night staring down at Levine waiting for cues.

Ironically, this tragic tale of dire poverty inspired one of the Met’s cheesiest productions: a few wobbly gray walls slashed with film noir lighting. Gregory Keller’s direction deserves kudos for keeping the energy level high and staying out the way of Meier’s gritty grandeur.

After Wozzeck’s suicide, Berg offers a gorgeous interlude as a eulogy for his antihero, a moment the Met orchestra lavished with romantic eloquence. But even that wasn’t quite as moving as the pre-performance ovation for Levine, who stood in the pit with hand over heart, repeatedly mouthing the words, “Thank you.”