Wozzeck, Metropolitan Opera, New York

by Martin Bernheimer

FINANCIAL TIMES

'Tis the season to be jolly. But no one seems to have told that to the masterminds at the murky and quirky Metropolitan Opera. Apart from a few flighty Fledermice and loony Lucias, the final weeks of 2005 are dominated by bleakness and gore. Nearing the end of its premiere run, Tobias Picker's sordid An American Tragedy served as a matinee-broadcast vehicle on Christmas Eve. Tuesday night Alban Berg's eternally grim Wozzeck returned in preparation for transmission on the afternoon of New Year's Eve. Luckily it is a very good Wozzeck.

The Met isn't much celebrated for a progressive vision in matters of repertory or staging. This essentially conservative bastion encourages audiences to applaud the oh-so-realistic snowflakes in Franco Zeffirelli's cast-of-thousands La Bohème. This company pays so little attention to modernism that its subscribers find the neo-romantic mush of An American Tragedy abrasive. Wozzeck, however, stands as a reassuring exception to the cautious rule.

James Levine conducts the score as if he found it simple. That may be the ultimate compliment. Revealing equal concern for dramatic pathos and musical force, he unravels the compositional knots, savours detail, bridges the impulses of stage and pit with sensitivity that never precludes tension. Mark Lamos' boldly economical production, introduced in 1997 and now overseen by Gregory Keller, defines verismo nightmares in the abstractions of Robert Israel's spacious décors.

The current cast functions as an inspired ensemble. The baritone Alan Held literally looms over his colleagues as a Wozzeck of stunned, perfectly focused agony. Katarina Dalayman sings - really sings - Marie's music with lyrical ardour that underscores hopeless passion. Graham Clark musters wily whines as the mad Captain, powerfully counterbalanced by Walter Fink as an almost buffoon- like Doctor. Clifton Forbis struts vocally more than visually in the bravado of the Drum Major. John Horton Murray (replacing the indisposed Eric Cutler) copes manfully with the ascending trials of Andres. Anthony Laciura burns the boards in the cameo of the Fool. Expressionism has seldom seemed so urgent.

Levine's Fine Judgment

by Jay Nordlinger

THE NEW YORK SUN

James Levine did what he was expected to do on Tuesday night: conduct a superb performance of Berg's "Wozzeck." The Metropolitan Opera has revived Mark Lamos's production of 1997.

Mr. Levine is Alban Berg's best friend on earth. He programs Berg every chance he gets: in the opera house, in the concert hall, in the chamber hall, in the recital hall. (Recall that Mr. Levine functions as both a conductor and a pianist.) Berg's output is relatively small, and Mr. Levine has championed just about all of it. His understanding of this composer is remarkable. Of course, his understanding of most composers is remarkable. That's what makes a musician.

Berg wrote two operas, the first being "Wozzeck" (1922), the second being "Lulu" (1935). While "Lulu" is not exactly feel-good - the title character gets cut to death by Jack the Ripper - "Wozzeck" is maybe the most terrible opera extant: terrible in that original sense of dreadful, too awful to behold. Briefly, the story concerns the inability of one man, Wozzeck, to cope with the cruelty that the world inflicts on him. He succumbs to madness, murder, and self-murder.

When Mr. Levine stepped into the pit, the audience went bonkers - obviously, they had heard him before. Mr. Levine proceeded to justify their enthusiasm. He led a "Wozzeck" that was taut, riveting, and right. He brought to the work a discipline both technical and emotional. He was plainly the student of George Szell (Cleveland's great maestro). A lesser conductor would have attempted to juice up the drama - but Mr. Levine knows that the drama is fully written in. Berg has supplied the foreboding, the mockery, the desperation, the terror. Mr. Levine simply let the music operate.

He understands that, of all lilies, "Wozzeck" doesn't have to be gilded.
Berg's score is nearly infinite in its variety. It is luminous, delicate, lush; it is also sparky, thorny, blood-curdling. Mr. Levine conveyed every aspect expertly, and his pacing of the opera - brief, at 100 minutes - was uncanny. What Mr. Levine demonstrated was, in a word, judgment. And I should emphasize the precision - the accuracy - of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. If there is not accuracy in this opera, interpretive insight may be for naught.

The orchestra made some mistakes, yes, but these were trivial, in the larger context. Notable among the players was a cello, both ravishing and haunting. Percussionists were on the money. And the onstage ensemble in Act II was completely winning.

Starring in the title role was the American Alan Held, who owns one of the most beautiful bass-baritones in the world. That voice is big, too, and exceptionally smooth. Fortunately, Mr. Held is also a skilled singing actor, and his Wozzeck was as believable as it was heartbreaking: heartbreaking because believable. Mr. Held is a very large man, and this made the character all the more pitiable: a helpless giant. Mr. Held was pathetic in his movements, bossed around, and ruined, by littler people.

In the role of Marie was Katarina Dalayman, the Swedish soprano. It was she who sang Marie when the Met staged "Wozzeck" four seasons ago - and she is, indeed, a standout in this role. On Tuesday night, she sang beautifully, evenly, and securely. Some of her top notes weren't pretty, but some of them didn't need to be, and some of them were. Dramatically, she was the mother, the betrayer, the victim - everything Marie is.

The Captain was portrayed by Graham Clark, the British tenor, who - in his singing and acting - was annoying and repugnant. In other words, he did his job. The bass singing the Doctor was something of a find: Walter Fink, an Austrian, making his Met debut. He showed a sizable, glowing instrument, and his Doctor was appropriately chilling: a clinical, inhuman SOB.

The Drum Major was Clifton Forbis, an American tenor, who strained some, but not disagreeably: The music can take it, and virtually calls for it. Another tenor, John Horton Murray, sang fairly freely as Andres. The mezzo-soprano Jill Grove made a duly earthy Margret. And Anthony Laciura - the Met's beloved character tenor - appeared as the Fool, startling and alarming. It's possible to make a deep impression in just a second or two.

Mark Lamos's production is shadowy, spare - perhaps too minimalist for its own good, but undeniably effective (and, best, unobtrusive). Robert Israel has costumed the show grittily. James F. Ingalls has lit it intelligently. And Gregory Keller's stage direction is honest, ungimmicky, and compelling.

Have you ever seen "Wozzeck" in the opera house? A good performance is a shattering experience. It is almost unbearable. You're practically sorry you came. So it was with Mr. Levine et al. on Tuesday night.

On January 8, by the way, Mr. Levine and the orchestra will perform Berg's Altenberg Lieder with the soprano Renee Fleming at Carnegie Hall. That will be less terrible.

'Wozzeck' Works for the Holidays

By Ronald Blum

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - Berg's "Wozzeck" does not fit with the frothy and festive fare many classical music institutions regularly offer during the holiday season. Yet the Metropolitan Opera brought back its 1997 production Monday night in a strongly cast revival starring Alan Held in the title role, Katarina Dalayman as Marie and music director James Levine on the podium. It was one of the season's successes, an intense, scorching examination of nihilism, with Levine bringing out a beautiful rendition of the atonal score.

On the surface, it is hard to fathom the Met's timing in presenting the 1925 opera, based on a Georg Buechner play. But "Wozzeck" does offer lessons particularly applicable to this time of year, with its examination of the moral rules Christianity imposes on society and the condemnation directed toward Marie, a woman who had a child out of wedlock with Wozzeck, then has an affair with the Drum Major.

Wozzeck, a poor soldier, can no longer deal with a society that has no place for him and scorns his very existence, and Marie's affair pushes him over the edge. So he stabs her and drowns while trying to find the knife.

Held is a bear of a man, towering above Marie and the rest of the cast, giving a gripping rendition in the baritone's first performance as Wozzeck at the Met. Dalayman, returning to a role she sang at the Met four seasons ago, lent a certain tenderness to Marie, a difficult task in a role than balances her wantonness, motherhood and poverty.

Graham Clark, who seemed to be about half Held's size, was the Captain, a role the tenor sang in this production's debut. He infused his character with such great scorn toward Wozzeck that his nastiness turned to glee, establishing from the outset the contempt Wozzeck felt.

The Austrian bass Walter Fink made his Met debut as the Doctor and was perfectly cast with his roly-poly appearance, his booming voice and an accent filled with sarcasm. Clifton Forbis (Drum Major) and Jill Grove (Margaret) also gave subtle accounts, and Jacob Wade was cute as the innocent Child.

Mark Lamos' production, with stark sets and costumes by Robert Israel, is virtually a monochrome gray, with high walls symbolic of a prison, although there is a splash of red to symbolize the blood.

Under Levine, the colors in the score were brilliant and breathtaking, and the 90-minute work (it was performed without intermission) was exhilarating.

An Expressionist Fervor, Illuminated by Levine

by Anthony Tommasini

THE NEW YORK TIMES

If James Levine could zap himself back in time and conduct the premiere of any opera in history, what among his favorites might he choose? Perhaps the Vienna premiere of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro." Or the Milan premiere of Verdi's "Otello." How about the Munich premiere of Wagner's "Meistersinger," a work he conducts magnificently? I love the idea of Mr. Levine's giving a sublime account of this humane comedy and forcing the anti-Semitic composer to confront his twisted prejudices.

My guess, though, is that Mr. Levine would choose the 1925 premiere at the Berlin State Opera of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck," a work Mr. Levine conducted on Tuesday night at the Metropolitan Opera. Adapted by Berg from Georg Büchner's play "Woyzeck," which was left in sketches when the author died at 23 in 1837, the opera was largely denounced by the critical establishment at its premiere. Yet it stunned and excited Berlin audiences with its excitingly radical musical language and brutally modern dramatic content. When Mark Lamos's arrestingly abstract 1997 production of "Wozzeck" returned to the Met on Tuesday night, Mr. Levine once again showed himself the living master of this extraordinary work. It remains one of the greatest achievements of his career.

Since coming to the Met in 1971, Mr. Levine has found it hard to fashion the company into a place that fosters new works, though he and the Met have done better at this in the last 10 years. But he has succeeded at another important goal: to make a few major operas from the early 20th century essential components of the Met's repertory, works like Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande," Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron" and Berg's unfinished masterpiece, "Lulu."

He has said that simply by bringing these works back regularly he is convinced that he can win over Met patrons and the public. Consider this: In February, Verdi's "Forza del Destino" returns to the Met for the first time in 10 years. During that same decade, "Wozzeck" has been presented in four seasons, including this one.

Not surprisingly, there were patches of empty seats in the house on Tuesday. Many people would not consider this bleak, atonal opera appropriate holiday fare, with its story of an oppressed soldier who supplements his meager pay by performing menial tasks for a preening and abusive captain and by offering himself as a subject for the experiments of a crackpot doctor. But Mr. Levine could not have asked for a more attentive and appreciative audience. With his brilliant and searching conducting and an inspired and excellent cast, I could not imagine a more compelling production.

Mr. Levine's achievement in "Wozzeck" comes from his ability to fuse its musical and dramatic elements. Though structured in three acts, each of five scenes, the opera is intensely compact, roughly 90 minutes of music, and the Met presents it without intermission. On the surface the music seems volatile and fractured, teeming with Expressionistic fervor. Yet the score actually has a carefully worked-out structure. Act I is a five-movement suite, with a rhapsody, a military march, a passacaglia and other forms. Act II is a mini-symphony in five movements; Act III is a series of six musical inventions.

Though Mr. Levine illuminates that structure, the message of his performance to listeners is: "Let me worry about all that; you just sit back and let yourself respond to dramatic sweep and musical power of this tragic story." Through careful voicing of chords, attention to details, coaxing of inner lines, expressive nuances and sheer intensity, he drew an electrifying performance from the Met orchestra, revealing this pungent score to be deeply emotional and excruciatingly beautiful.

Heading the cast was the baritone Alan Held, a towering and vocally powerful Wozzeck. That he loomed over those who oppressed him just lent more poignancy to his powerlessness, as poverty and a sense of impotency turn him delusional. As Marie, Wozzeck's long-suffering common-law wife, the soprano Katarina Dalayman was a haunted and shattered presence. She sent Berg's vocal lines soaring with her burnished and powerful singing, yet brought affecting intimacy to the forlorn lullaby she sings to her little boy, endearingly portrayed by Jacob Wade.

In his Met debut, the impressive bass Walter Fink was a stentorian and absurdly officious doctor. Also fine were the tenor Clifton Forbis, as the preening Drum Major who seduces Marie, too passive and beleaguered to resist, and the tenor John Horton Murray, substituting for Eric Cutler (who was ill) as Wozzeck's friend Andres.

On New Year's Eve the Met is presenting a gala performance of Strauss's frothy "Die Fledermaus," a traditional offering. But there is another option for opera lovers that day. Go to the Met's matinee of "Wozzeck," let Berg's searing music and unblinking examination of oppression move and humble you. Then head off that night to a well-earned party with friends.