Recovered Enough to Play Hobbled: Thomas Hampson Makes his Debut as Wozzeck

by Anthony Tommasini

THE NEW YORK TIMES

After missing the first two performances in the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Berg’s “Wozzeck” because of bronchitis, the baritone Thomas Hampson sang on Thursday night, his debut in the title role. As he had made clear in interviews and in posts on his Facebook page, Mr. Hampson is excited to be taking on this “challenging genius opera,” as he called it.

On Thursday he won a deserved ovation for his anguished, haunted portrayal of Wozzeck, an oppressed soldier in a German garrison town who struggles to support Marie, his common-law wife, and their young son, slowly losing his grip on reality. Some patches of leathery sound in Mr. Hampson’s singing suggested that he is still grappling with the remnants of his illness. Still, Berg wrote the role to emphasize dramatic intensity; certain passages call for quasi-spoken delivery, a kind of Sprechstimme. In bouts of rage, Wozzeck shouts his outbursts.

Mr. Hampson probably did a little more shouting and barking than he wanted to, ideally. But in the wrenching moments when the role calls for burnished, lyrical singing, he drew upon the innate richness of his voice and shaped phrases poignantly, even if his sound lacked a little heft this night.

He has called “Wozzeck” the “opera Mahler never wrote.” At his best here, Mr. Hampson, a renowned Mahler singer, brought that composer’s expressiveness to his portrayal.

The baritone Matthias Goerne, who stepped into this gripping 1997 production by Mark Lamos on short notice for Mr. Hampson when this run opened on March 6, was a stocky, bedraggled, everyman Wozzeck. With his tall, distinguished physique, Mr. Hampson might seem the wrong body type for the role, but he used his imposing stature to dramatic effect. This Wozzeck, with hollowed eyes and hobbled gait, seemed to be sinking under the pressure of poverty and the manipulation of his sneering superiors. Still, now and then a gleam of dignity, even charisma, came through, underlining the character’s tragedy. If only this Wozzeck had been given a break or two, a decent job, his life might have turned out differently.

The rest of the strong cast was the same as on opening night. If anything, with Mr. Hampson back, everyone seemed more confident, especially the soprano Deborah Voigt, who has been singing Marie for the first time in this run at the Met; she gives a vulnerable, intense portrayal of a role that suits her well. James Levine, conducting an opera he reveres, again drew a shattering performance from the great Met Orchestra.

The Nearby Wozzeck Changes His Address

by Anthony Tomassini

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Last-minute cast changes happen routinely in opera, but seldom with the mix of anxiety and, in the end, triumph that took place on Thursday when the Metropolitan Opera revived its 1997 production of Berg’s “Wozzeck.”

The distinguished German baritone Matthias Goerne, an acclaimed Wozzeck, agreed on Thursday morning to step in that night for an ailing Thomas Hampson. Mr. Goerne was in New York, having sung the role in a concert performance on Feb. 28 with the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall as part of the Vienna: City of Dreams festival.

That Mr. Goerne is a great Wozzeck was clear from his wrenching performance with the Philharmonic. At the Met on Thursday, he so completely inhabited the role — that of a delusional, miserably poor soldier living in a German garrison town around 1830 — and so dominated the stage, that you would have thought that he had spent weeks rehearsing in this stark, gripping production by Mark Lamos, with minimal props, black walls, looming shadows and blotches of bloody reds. (Just out of support for Mr. Hampson, a friend, Mr. Goerne had attended the Met’s dress rehearsal on Monday.)

There was other good news on Thursday: the vocally and dramatically affecting performance of Marie, Wozzeck’s common-law wife and the mother of his son, by the soprano Deborah Voigt. Ms. Voigt has gone through a period of vocal struggles, something she talked about in an interview in The New York Times this fall. She is not now singing the roles she anticipated she would be performing in her glory days as a dramatic soprano. This was Ms. Voigt’s first Marie, and it’s a good part for her.

Marie is a beleaguered woman, whose despair over Wozzeck and their poverty drives her to succumb to a blustering Drum Major, here the Wagnerian tenor Simon O’Neill. Ms. Voigt daringly conveys Marie’s emotional volatility, her mix of desire for the Drum Major and shame over her weakness. One moment this Marie is a radiant mother, glowing with affection for her boy; the next, she is angrily shoving him away, only to panic and, looking needy, beg the child for an embrace.

Though Ms. Voigt’s performance had some wobbly passages and steely top notes, she brought earthy poignancy to the role, especially in Marie’s tender moments with her child. When roused to passion and torment, she sent Marie’s outbursts soaring with visceral intensity.

The conductor James Levine drew an incisive and rapturous performance from the great Met Orchestra and this inspired cast. He has called himself “a Berg freak,” and this opera has long been a specialty of his.

The plushness of the Vienna Philharmonic’s “Wozzeck” performance under Franz Welser-Möst was still fresh for me on Thursday night. The Met Orchestra held its own in the sonic splendor department and outdid the Philharmonic in transparency and precision. This essentially atonal score can be heard as emanating from the heritage of Wagner and Mahler, something that came through in the richness of Mr. Levine’s performance with the Met Orchestra. But he also drew out the music’s disturbing, fractured and radical elements.

In the opening scene, we see Wozzeck shaving his sermonizing Captain (the bright-voiced tenor Peter Hoare), one of the menial tasks he performs to supplement his meager soldier’s salary. A fraught orchestral transition leads to the second scene, and the way Mr. Levine conducted this music, it seemed like the epitome of pulsing, daring 20th-century modernism. Throughout this ingeniously compact 90-minute work, Mr. Levine and his players relished every astringent, piercing beauty of Berg’s harmonic language.

The British bass Clive Bayley made an auspicious Met debut as the Doctor, who enlists Wozzeck as a guinea pig for preposterous medical experiments. Mr. Bayley brings a robust voice and a maniacal gaze to this sneering quack. The tenor Russell Thomas is a vocally hearty Andres, Wozzeck’s only friend. The rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford sings Margret, Marie’s neighbor, who encourages the infatuation with the Drum Major.

In the end, this was Mr. Goerne’s night. When the Captain chastised Wozzeck for not being married to Marie and not having his child blessed by the church, Mr. Goerne tucked bitterness and sting into his sullen, defeated replies that poor people cannot afford to be virtuous. Slowly, Mr. Goerne showed us an unstable Wozzeck transforming into a pitiable but dangerous man, who, in a fit of jealousy, stabs Marie to death, then later drowns trying to recover the weapon from a pond while also thinking that the water might cleanse his guilt.

It would appear that Thursday’s night performance will be Mr. Goerne’s only during the Met’s run of “Wozzeck.” He is going to South Africa to work on a project with the artist and director William Kentridge. So the backstage drama will continue as the Met waits to see if Mr. Hampson, who said on his Facebook page that he had come down with bronchitis, gets better.