Wozzeck - get thee to the opera

I had watched the date creep up for the opera, Wozzeck, one I knew nothing about.

I am always of two minds. Just get myself there, no matter what the cost – just do it for myself.

And then the other side of me is always saying, stay home, go through files, sort out cupboards, just try to get on top of daily chores.

Rebecca called me saying that she had given her ticket for the opera away, thinking she would be in Gitxsan territory for the weekend. But she had got a second ticket now, excited to get to the show. I think her phone call is what tipped me into getting myself there – 20 below or not.

I just can’t go. I have to study the small precis that the opera posts on the Cineplex page; I have to read what Wikki says, and I have to look for some utube clips of tunes from the opera.

Have done all of that I marched myself off to what I thought would be a short day: 2 hours, and really only 1 ½ hours of opera – the rest filled in with interview with William Kentridge and Yannick Nézet-Séguin hosted by Peter Gelb.

In one word, the opera was amazing.

If I get two words, the second one would be powerful. I felt an intensity that I rarely experience in opera. In the small introduction hosted by the singer who we will next see in Porgy and Bess, he said that the production had singer-actors. The acknowledgement that we have both singers and actors doubled my desire to watch for both of these traits, or at least just sit back and enjoy them.

Without the singing, but with just the music and just watching Kentridge’s background flash by would have been over-whelming. That 90 minutes was so much work for me. I had studied one part of the precis – the sentence that told me to look for a “ramshackle warren of stairs, ramps, discarded furniture and debris”.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wozzeck-review-on-the-brink-of-madness-11577735180

For me there are two valid ways to approach a new work: just go and enjoy it; knock myself out learning what others have said about the production.

I prefer the latter, but am also willing to just go and do it. I am glad I read the precis which I shall copy for the website and put below, hoping it will peak the interest of some of my friends who have read this far. The encore is March 7th. I have it penciled in on my daytimer. Clearly, once was not enough.

Even the curtain call was intense, looking for all of the characters I had seen in the show. The singers and dancer were no longer in the shadows, so I wanted to see their faces. The Captain, the Drum Major and the Doctor were only on the stage for a small instant in the curtain call.

I wanted to linger on Wozzeck, Maria and the puppeteer who took the place of the child.

And now I haven’t said a thing about what the opera is really about, that universal charge of the arts, “to make people think”. The issues of war, violence against women, violence against the poor, the evils of war – each of those in the opera deserve a tightly woven essay.

As an aside I am always looking at the theatre for “my kind of people”, knowing all the while, if someone is at the opera, that is what they are. But yesterday a woman sat beside me and we exchanged information: she is one year younger than me; has seen all the Kentridge productions (The Nose, Lulu and was now at Wozzeck); sees every opera in fact; is still working (at the Tom Baker); is a widow; loves having a full life. I felt like I was her – alive and still having fun.

So here is that tight paragraph off of the movie webpage, giving enough information that a person might just want to go to this opera.  And here is what operawire says about the show.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s expressionistic masterpiece Wozzeck, regarded for its intense emotional power and brilliant score as one of the most significant operas of the 20th century. Composed during and in the 5 aftermath of World War I, Berg’s dark exploration of a soldier besieged by the evils of society, is staged by Kentridge in a ramshackle warren of stairs, ramps, discarded furniture, and debris. His own theatrically animated charcoal drawings, along with other projected drawings, maps, and film clips, evoke a nightmarish world of crashed planes, searchlights, ghostly gas masks, and battlefields. Peter Mattei makes his role debut as Wozzeck opposite Elza van den Heever as Marie, the mother of his child. Singing the roles of Wozzeck’s tormentors are Christopher Ventris as the Drum-Major, Gerhard Siegel as the Captain, and Christian Van Horn as the Doctor. Andrew Staples makes his Met debut as Andres. Kentridge, who previously directed Berg’s Lulu and Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Met, unveiled the new production at the 2017 Salzburg Festival, where it received critical acclaim. Kentridge’s production is a co-production of the Met, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Australia, and Salzburg Festival.