World on the brink

You jump straight into the action: Here a superior who allows himself to be shaved, there a subordinate, Wozzeck, who is teased and tormented, scolded and pushed around. And by almost everyone: the doctor, who abuses him for questionable medical experiments, the captain, the world around him: sadism and mockery everywhere.

What Alban Berg tells in his opera is the story of a tormented creature who, beset by visions and fears, ridiculed and tormented by society, is driven out of existence - until the final catastrophe occurs: Wozzeck, who only finds support in his lover Marie, murders her after she has betrayed him, and tragically perishes himself. What remains is their child. The way Berg shows his loneliness, but also his innocence, in the final bars of the opera and - if you want to hear it that way - hints at the tragedy of his future life: it grips and shakes you, like so much of the opera.

The work began in Vienna, in what is now the Kammerspiele in the first district of Vienna. It was here, in 1914, that Alban Berg saw a performance of Georg Büchner's drama fragment Woyzeck. And was so impressed by what he saw that he immediately thought of setting the material to music. Büchner's play, in turn, was based on historical events, or more precisely, on several criminal cases. He focused on one person from the 19th century in particular: the former soldier Johann Christian Woyzeck, who, socially degraded, alienated from society and tormented by delusions, murdered his long-time lover out of jealousy with seven stab wounds. The crime was followed by a long trial, which also dealt with the question of the murderer's sanity. Although the case was never fully clarified, Woyzeck was executed - for some just a brutal attempt to make a deterrent example of him. It was precisely these discussions and the social circumstances that interested Büchner. As a doctor of philosophy and natural scientist, he dealt with both the scientific and social aspects of the world and developed revolutionary ideas - think of his book Krieg den Palästen! This is exactly how his Woyzeck should be read: both as a social outcry and as an approach to ethical and scientific issues that were hotly debated at the time. And as a psychological study. It is not for nothing that he has his Woyzeck whisper: "Man is an abyss, it makes you dizzy when you look down."

In the case of the composer Berg, it was precisely about this psychology, about the tragic plot, the tragic characters - and the socially oppressive. "It is not only the fate of this poor person, exploited and tormented by the whole world, that moves me so much, but also the unheard-of atmospheric content of the individual scenes," he later wrote to composer and friend Anton Webern.

Berg's sympathies, like Büchner's, also lay with the "poor people", and so it is logical that only they are allowed to bear names, whereas the others, such as the doctor, the captain and the drum major, lack personalization and only represent generalized, fundamental evil.

For the libretto, which he wrote himself, Berg selected scenes from the original play, rearranged and shortened them. The musical conception and textual adaptation intertwined: "The music was not written to a text, but the text was inserted into the plan of the composition. Berg's intention is unmistakable: not to distort or weaken the form, content and linguistic power of the poetry," says musicologist Ernst Hilmar. However, the setting dragged on for various reasons, and it was not until 1922 that the score was essentially completed. While Erich Wolfgang Korngold was writing his melodious, melodiously shimmering operas at the same time, Berg took a completely different approach with Wozzeck. Largely atonal, it triggered a discussion - which he did not explicitly intend. At the same time, the composer drew on flexibly handled historical forms such as the baroque suite, which structure the dramatic action subcutaneously. The result is an opera that is a symbiosis of psychological analysis, social outcry and highly personal artistic expression: the "first model of a music of real humanism", as Adorno once put it.

One small detail: it was Berg's teacher Arnold Schönberg who was initially critical of the new opera, even advising his pupil against it. But then, when the work was finished, the stern older man was gripped by enthusiasm: "I assumed for sure that Berg would put together something talented, but I still had my great doubts as to whether he would be able to create something truly theatrical. And now this is the big surprise. This is an opera! Real theater music!" Incidentally, the work is dedicated to Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler's widow.

In the Vienna State Opera's current production of Wozzeck, director Simon Stone does not deal with a historical fact, but brings the action into the immediate present. These are settings we are all familiar with; people as we encounter them. Stone shifts the action from the military environment of the original to present-day Vienna so as not to soften the tragedy of the material with a historical filter. Wozzeck is set here and now: in the subway station, at the sausage stand. The director: "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 soldierly biotope. The fatal consequences that arise when individuals gain power over others and humiliate them are omnipresent and transferable to any society." As in a documentary, the events in Stone's production are analyzed, but at the same time the perspective shifts again and again so that we see the world through Wozzeck's hallucinatory eyes. This makes it possible to show his suffering comprehensively: on the one hand, the harassment by his fellow human beings and, on the other, the tormenting madness in his head. And yet: "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," says Stone. "Because there are enough people in similar situations who still don't become violent. This is an important lesson that Büchner and Berg have once again forcefully demonstrated to us."

After his acclaimed Fidelio premiere series, Franz Welser-Möst returns to the Staatsoper conductor's podium with the revival of Wozzeck. Under his direction, Marlis Petersen sings Marie for the first time in the Haus am Ring, while Johannes Martin Kränzle performs the title role.