Berg - Wozzeck

ONP Bastille, Thursday March 24 2022

Conductor: Susanna Mälkki. Production: William Kentridge with Luc De Wit. Sets: Sabine Theunissen. Costumes: Greta Goiris. Lighting: Urs Schönebaum. Video: Catherine Meyburgh. Wozzeck: Johan Reuter. Tambourmajor: John Daszak. Andres: Matthew Newlin. Hauptmann: Gerhard Siegel. Doktor: Falk Struckmann. Erster Handwerksbursch: Mikhail Timoshenko. Zweiter Handwerksbursch: Tobias Westman. Der Narr: Heinz Göhrig. Marie: Eva‑Maria Westbroek. Margret: Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur. Ein Soldat: Vincent Morell. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Hauts-de-Seine and Opéra National de Paris Children's Choirs. 

Photos : Agathe Poupeney/ONP

With Christoph Marthaler's 'old' Paris staging (which I'd gladly have seen again) still in mind alongside unenthusiastic comments from people who'd seen William Kentridge's in New York, I went to this 'new' production here thinking it might be a let-down, but no, it turned out to be a powerful experience.

 

Kentridge's production is visually dense (as usual) and dimly-lit, making it hard work to take in, perhaps one reason some people don't like it. The set is a vast, towering and complex post-Blitz pile-up of boards and beams, gang-planks, cupboards and moveable walls, almost filling the stage and forcing the crowd movements well to the front, on the narrow space still available. At the beginning, instead of shaving the Captain, Wozzeck is projecting a series of drawings and animations on to a screen, and throughout the work a kaleidoscopic profusion of catastrophic, monochrome images evoking WWI overlay the set, commenting on the text, underlining the score and setting the successive scenes: soldiers, weapons, planes, a Zeppelin, explosions, ruined cities and shattered landscapes, in style recalling both bitter Expressionism and biting Neue Sachlichkeit.

The risk is visual overload and illegibility, but individual interactions are helpfully picked out with spotlights, and the Bruegelesque crowd scenes, and stagehands and characters darting about on crutches, all add to the grim, cumulative impression of a society of arme Leute oppressed and crippled, figuratively and literally, by militarism and war. With innocent citizens and hapless Russian soldiers dying right now for nothing more than one man's madness in Ukraine, the effect is chilling and harrowing. Perhaps it's just as well that using a puppet instead of a child actor toned the emotion down a notch at the end. It might have been a bit too much.

Of course, the experience wouldn't have been so powerful had the cast not been up to it. Everybody - soloists, chorus and orchestra - was on form. Eva‑Maria Westbroek was the best I've ever seen her, singing the role magnificently out into the potentially baleful maw of the Bastille. The drum-major is a role that suits the current asperities of John Daszak's voice. Falk Struckmann and Gerhard Siegel made an excellent, well-matched double act, the latter especially outstanding, his voice ringing out. Matthew Newlin, whisked in from singing Lully in Versailles only the night before to replace Tansel Akzeybek, seemed even more at home as a last-minute Andres than as Atys. Only Johan Reuter seemed overshadowed somewhat, vocally and dramatically, by his more charismatic colleagues.

Susanna Mälkki's conducting was remarkable. I'm not sure I've ever found Berg's compact, meticulously-constructed score so distinctly legible. The orchestra clearly gets on with her like a house on fire and played for her with exceptional delicacy and explosive yet disciplined outbursts. The chorus was on top form as well. Opera being the sprawling, intractable thing it is, perhaps it's daft to wonder if a handful of 'perfect' operas exist. But daftness is one of the few things I'm good at, and I get better at it as I grow older. So I'll admit I sat there at the end pondering the question, thinking, also, of Monteverdi's Orfeo and Bizet's Carmen, and wondering if Wozzeck might not be a prime candidate to appear on a very short list.