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by Alban Berg, directed by William Kentridge

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

April 25-May 16, 2025

Captain: “Er läuft ja wie ein offenes Rasiermesser durch die Welt”

December 14 this year will mark the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Alban Berg’s seminal opera Wozzeck. That the opera still sounds so uncompromisingly modern is a testament to its greatness. Musically the Canadian Opera Company’s production is outstanding. No fan of the work could hope for more exquisite playing from the enormous orchestra or more powerful interpretations of the roles. The COC is presenting William Kentridge’s production for the 2017 Salzburg Festival. The production is so visually busy that it soon becomes tiresome. The music, however, does not.

South African director and artist Kentridge is known for his multi-media productions combining his particular style of old-fashioned animation and puppetry. Alban Berg wrote the libretto for the opera based on the play Woyzeck (wr.1836) left unfinished by George Büchner (1813-37). The play was first published in 1877 and first performed in 1913 with the title Wozzeck, which came from the first editor’s misreading of the handwritten manuscript. The play is now regarded as one of the classics of German literature and the opera as one of greatest operas of the 20th century.

Berg’s music for the opera is atonal, meaning that is consciously rebels against the hierarchy of tones or keys used in European music from the 17th century on. COC audiences are most familiar with this style from Erwartung written in 1909 by Arnold Schoenberg which, paired with Bela Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (wr. 1911), is one of the COC’s most popular productions. Both Erwartung and Wozzeck are expressionist operas in that the composers present the action from the distorted viewpoint of the central character who in both operas is in mental distress. Atonal composition is therefore an appropriate choice for works where the central figure feels completely out of tune (in every sense) with the world.

Kentridge and his design team have moved the action of Wozzeck from the early 19th century to the period of its composition from 1914-25, i.e. during and after World War I. This approach certainly brings home relevant themes in the opera like poverty, militarism and the instability of everything that was once certain. Designer Sabine Theunissen’s set looks like shanties built on top of a mound of debris connected by rickety-looking walkways.

The opera opens not with Wozzeck shaving the Captain, but with Wozzeck running a projector showing animated movies on a screen of the Captain’s. These movies provide a foretaste of Kentridge projecting Catherine Meyburgh’s films of animated figures marching, panoramas of destroyed building and maps of invasion plans onto the entire cyclorama behind the mound of debris. Often, in the second half of the opera a film is also showing on the Captain’s screen creating a picture-in-picture effect on stage. Needless to say, all this motion is far too distracting.

The combination of the bric-à-brac set with two films presents us with an image of chaos that is not conducive to understanding the opera. For those unfamiliar with it, atonal music may sound chaotic since it adheres to no particular key. To have the set also look chaotic reinforces this naïve view of the music. Far more important is the fact that Berg’s opera is very tightly structured. Berg reduced Büchner’s play to only 15 scenes, five per each of three acts. The scenes are structured according of classical forms of music. Act 1, Scene 4, is a passacaglia. All of Act 2 is conceived of as a symphony in five movements. Act 3 consists of an interlude and five types of invention. A different way of looking at the opera is that the world has been so structured that a man who believes in morality like Wozzeck has no place in it.

An important flaw in Kentridge’s direction is to omit Wozzeck’s shaving of the Captain. Shaving shows that at the beginning Wozzeck has enough control over a razor to shave a man he hates without harming him. The action follows the increased confusion of Wozzeck’s mind until he loses control, takes a knife and stabs Marie whom he loves. The Captain makes the important remark to Wozzeck: “Er läuft ja wie ein offenes Rasiermesser durch die Welt” (“You run like an open razor through the world”, “Er” meaning “you” when addressing an inferior). Replacing shaving with showing films misses this imagery entirely.

Despite all this, what is always most important in opera is the singing and playing, and here the COC production could not be bettered. Michael Kupfer-Radecky plays the soldier Wozzeck as a man with PTSD. He shows Wozzeck haunted by visions and voices and clinging to scraps he has learned from the Bible for moral guidance. Kupfer-Radecky has a deep baritone and looks and sounds too powerful to be treated in such a dismissive way by the Captain and the Doctor. But he sings “Wir arme Leut” (“We poor people”) with such pathos that we can tell Wozzeck suffers and knows that others suffer. Kupfer-Radecky makes it quite clear that all that keeps Wozzeck going is Marie and their child. Kupfer-Radecky makes the scene particularly heartrending when Wozzeck comes across Marie’s body, seeks her murderer then realizes it is himself “Mörder! Ha! Da ruft's. Nein, ich selbst” (“Murderer! Ha! It’s calling! No, it’s myself”). The great virtue of Kupfer-Radecky’s performance is how accurately he demonstrates how Wozzeck’s madness cuts him off from the rest of the world.

The emotions of Ambur Braid’s portrait of Marie shine brightly. Braid’s soprano has only gained in fullness and strength since she last appeared in Toronto. Her traversal of Marie’s highs and lows, vocally and dramatically, is tremendous. She makes it understandable though frightening that Marie should throw herself at so unworthy a man as the Drum Major, but Braid also shows us the sad awareness Marie has of her own fallibility in the mirror scene of Act 2.

The two grotesque figures who have power over Wozzeck are the Captain and the Doctor, both excellently sung and acted by tenor Michael Schade and bass Anthony Robin Schneider. Schade makes the Captain the more memorable character with his obsessive fear of death and hypocritical critique of Wozzeck’s morality. Schneider’s Doctor has a resounding voice but is less demonstrative than is Schade in highlighting his character’s mania.

Tenor Matthew Cairns is a fine Drum Major foolishly marching about and blind to his own vanity. Mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó makes Marie’s neighbour Margret memorable as a woman all too anxious to witness the tragedy she knows is coming to Marie and Wozzeck. In great contrast to the callousness in attitude and expression of these two is the sweetness of tenor Owen McCausland as Andres, the only person we could call Wozzeck’s friend. McCausland shows that Wozzeck’s visions frighten Andres and that Andres is the only one who tries to pull Wozzeck away from his dark thoughts.

Toronto audiences love conductor Johannes Debus so much that he is greeted with cheers when he first takes his place on the podium. The decision to play “O Canada” to begin the performance struck exactly the right chord with an audience dismayed with its closet neighbour. For the opera, Berg demands an orchestra of more than 80 musicians. Under Debus this vast ensemble brings out all the beauty and terror of Berg’s music with precision and deep commitment. How the massed instruments gradually work towards unison on the note B after Marie’s murder is both magnificent and spine-chilling at once. Those who may fear atonal music will be surprised at the lyricism Debus brings out in Berg, showing quite clearly how Berg’s atonality is a logical development from Wagner’s chromaticism.

The COC has triumphed with Wozzeck before. In 2006 Richard Bradshaw chose the work to be the last opera performed in the Hummingbird Centre (now Meridian Hall) and had former COC Artistic Director Lotfi Mansouri revive his acclaimed production from 1990 designed by Michael Levine. That production was visually incisive; this is not. This production, however, may be musically the greatest Wozzeck the COC has ever produced and for that reason alone is worth experiencing by all opera lovers.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Wozzeck; ensemble in Act 3, Scene 3 of Wozzeck; Anthony Robin Schneider as the Doctor and Michael Schade as the Captain; Brooklyn Marshall with puppet of Marie’s child and Ambur Braid as Marie. © 2025 Michael Cooper.

For tickets visit: www.coc.ca.