Berg's Wozzeck

William Kentridge (stage director), Vladimir Jurowski (conductor) – Avec Matthias Goerne, John Daszak, Mauro Peter...

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Cast

William Kentridge — Stage director

Luc De Wit — Co-stage director

Sabine Theunissen — Stage sets

Greta Goiris — Costumes

Catherine Meyburgh — Video editor

Urs Schönebaum — Lighting

Kim Gunning — Video operator

Matthias Goerne — Wozzeck

Program notes

Alban Berg's Wozzeck took over the stage of the 2017 Salzburg Festival in this production of all-stars led by director William Kentridge and conductor Vladimir Jurowski at the head of the Vienna Philharmonic. It stars Matthias Goerne as Wozzeck, John Daszak as the Drum Major, Mauro Peter as Andres, and Gerhard Siegel as the Captain.

After attending a 1914 Viennese performance of Woyzeck, German playwright Georg Büchner's unfinished play, Alban Berg decided to transform the fragmented drama into an opera. Drawing on Büchner's text and his personal experiences as a soldier during the First World War, Berg produced Wozzeck, a three-act opera that employs atonality and Sprechgesang to tell the story of a society in which everyone is lost, and where brutality, frustration, and desperation reign. Despite the Nazis' efforts to stifle it during the war years, the work was championed by conductor Erich Kleiber and achieved enduring international success. An ominous and fascinating musical study of the darker realms of the human psyche...