Word: wozzeck
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...universal verdict of the critics who have heard it, Alban Berg's atonal opera Wozzeck is the finest opera composed in the last 40 years.* Berg, an Austrian, finished Wozzeck in 1921, and it had immediate success in Europe. Oddly enough, in the U.S., it has had only one stage production (in 1931), and only a few doughty conductors have nibbled away at concert excerpts. One reason: its 15 scenes are costly to stage. More important, although Wozzeck is now more than 25 years old, most opera impresarios fear that, musically, it is still 25 years ahead...
...crowded Carnegie Hall last week, Manhattan music lovers heard the next best thing to a stage production of Wozzeck-a brilliant concert version of the whole opera by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony and first-rate soloists under Dimitri Mitropoulos...
...Good Fool. Berg, who died at 50 in 1935, got the idea for Wozzeck in a "drama fragment" by the gifted but short-lived German playwright, Georg Büchner (1813-37). In the stormy aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and in a period of liberal revolutions, Büchner had written the tragedy of a clodlike Prussian soldier named Franz Wozzeck...
...opera, as in the original story, Wozzeck is a captain's batman who offers himself to the sardonic and sadistic regimental doctor as a physiological demonstration piece for the doctor's lectures. Wozzeck's purpose is to earn enough money to support his girl, Marie, and their child. But, tormented and ridiculed, Guinea Pig Wozzeck begins to have hallucinations. When his girl is seduced by a strutting drum major, Wozzeck mutters confusedly about "sin"; he stabs Marie, throws the knife into a pond. Then, in fear of discovery, he wades into the pond to recover the shining...
Berg: Lyric Suite (the Juilliard String Quartet; Columbia, 2 sides LP). Austrian Atonalist Alban Berg, who died in 1935; is rapidly coming into his own. His opera Wozzeck is enjoying a spate of concert performances (Columbia and Artist Records have recorded excerpts), and it will be a featured work at this year's Salzburg Festival. The Lyric Suite, composed six years later (1926), comes far more strangely to the ear, is not recommended for those not already pleased to make Berg's acquaintance. Performance and recording: excellent...