A sharp look at social reality

Since the dramaturgy of this opera, the dramaturgical action, is so clear and consistent, it is more a question of finding a way to outline and define the world that determines Wozzeck's life. Büchner's extreme economy in terms of stage directions - which Alban Berg hardly added to - means that the subject matter is basically universal. For this reason, I think it would be a shame to leave the plot in the proposed, purely military setting. It would be far too restrictive and narrow-minded to squeeze all the repression, brutality, abuse and sadism described here into the confines of a past, purely military biotope. The fatal consequences that arise when individuals gain power over others and humiliate them are omnipresent and can be applied to any society. It is always true that when people are humiliated into animals, we should not be surprised when they revert to atavistic, pre-civilizational reaction patterns.

It is often enough for poorer and weaker people to be forgotten or regarded as irrelevant in order to create monsters. It is not for nothing that Wozzeck says in his conversation with the captain in the first scene that he would lead a completely different life of moral integrity if he were not poor. Unfortunately, the topicality of this work has not changed since Büchner or Berg, as the gap between rich and poor has still not been closed despite all the political changes and efforts. On the contrary, it has widened again in recent years.

It is always important to me to present the respective story to viewers in their own familiar world. In this case, both Büchner and Berg made a great effort from the outset to depict a contemporary reality. In my view, it would therefore be wrong to obscure the timeless validity of the work by leaving it in a past that is alien to us and can only be experienced to a limited extent.

I would rather call it a documentary - as we know, Büchner used real events which he then processed in this work. The audience is given a very factual demonstration of what can happen when victims are insulted and humiliated, and what psychological mechanisms then come into play.

Both are true. On the one hand, we depict the view from the outside, the life of the underdog Wozzeck, his relationships with other people, his surroundings, his world and show that you could meet someone like this at any time in the subway, at a sausage stand, on the street. After Marie's murder, Wozzeck goes back to Margret's pub as if nothing had happened. We've all seen reports in the media of people who kill someone and then leave the body lying around in an apartment for weeks, for example. There are strange people like that, and who knows if you haven't just walked past someone like that or sat next to someone like that.

Highlighting this aspect is very important to us. On the other hand - building on the expressionistic nature of Berg's music, which reflects Wozzeck's inner life and mental states - we keep changing perspective and become part of the hallucinations of the title character. In this way, we visualize what is troubling Wozzeck internally in addition to the external circumstances and as a result of these external circumstances.

Perhaps Büchner and Berg also wanted to say something about malicious civil servants and professorial physicians. At the same time, however, they portray these two characters as idiosyncratic in a certain way. It's not like Brecht, where a character fulfills a certain function, they are rather extremely strange, people who you might also think you know from your own life as eccentrics.

By no means - caricatures are readable, characterized by exaggerated peculiarities that are taken for granted. But the Captain and the Doctor are completely intangible and atypical, characterized by the most contradictory, unexpectedly revealed emotions and idiosyncrasies.

This raises a very burning issue: How often do lawyers, even today, make the intolerable argument that a murder of a woman committed through jealousy is at least understandable, if not partly excusable, since she would have cheated on her partner to begin with? The fact that someone in the twenty-first century dares to formulate something like this at all says a lot about certain ways of thinking, about allegedly offended pride, lost honor, insecure identities and similar nonsense that we actually believe to have long since been consigned to history. Wozzeck is undoubtedly a victim many times over. But - and this is important - the murder of Marie makes him a perpetrator, and this act cannot be derived from his role as a victim! Because there are enough people in similar situations who do not become violent.

This is an important lesson that Büchner and Berg demonstrate to us once again. Apart from that, since when has fraud been a crime punishable by death? If that were the case, half the population would probably have to die. Of course Marie doesn't treat Wozzeck well, of course she betrays him with the drum major. But unlike Wozzeck's murder, her position is easy to understand: she lives with a man who has gone completely mad and is constantly thinking and speaking crazy things. Dependent on him, she sits alone at home day in, day out with a child to whom Wozzeck pays hardly any attention. She hopes to escape this feeling of being locked up with no prospects, and the drum major seems to be a viable option. Can Marie be blamed for wanting to be free and self-determined?

Taking your time and waiting for a partner, for the only one you really love, is a privilege of the sheltered social classes. Of course, there are also genuine love relationships in the precariat. But if you don't know how you're going to pay the heating or the rent at the end of the month, or whether you have enough money to give your child the basic necessities, then you quickly take the first person who can offer you a certain amount of security and unfortunately don't leave them immediately, even when violence comes into play.

I believe that this option exists in his subconscious very early on, probably from the very beginning. He is always obsessed with the thought of death, mortality and annihilation, he talks about blood even before he confronts Marie with the knife. Wozzeck apparently does not realize how much it is working inside him, that he is being belittled and ridiculed all the time and by almost everyone. We are not presented with an Otello who is only thrown off track by the machinations of an Iago; there is no turning point in Wozzeck, no development.

He is enslaved and mentally crippled from the very beginning. The unloading simply happens at the moment when he becomes fully aware of his condition. This moment is therefore purely coincidental and could have happened months earlier or later. But once again, this is no excuse for what he did. That's why it's so important how we bring up children, what image we give them of the relationship between two people - and how we set an example.

Well, you can read it in such a way that the child at the end of the opera is actually already being tormented by the others and the humiliations already begin in these early years. What we can learn in any case: While we adults are busy with our difficulties, we often forget about the children and don't realize that we are dragging them into our problems. On the other hand, the child is young and, as we all know, hope dies last. It would be really worrying if they started to develop more or less subtle aggression at this point. But there is no question of that. His "chop-chop" is more a sign of innocence.