London’s South Bank Centre is following up 2025’s series of multimedia events with a further sequence entitled ‘Multitudes’. While inclusivity and genre-bending can sometimes amount to little more than an excuse for ceding art music space to accessible work in hock to commercial interests, no such charge could be levelled at tonight’s show. It had sold reasonably well too, for all that Berg’s still-challenging idiom prompted some walkouts before the end.
This bold, totemic opera should never be an easy listen or watch, depicting as it does the brutal descent of one impoverished, downtrodden individual. A man with a partner of sorts and, by her, an illegitimate child, he is ultimately driven to mental collapse and murder. Only the child is left, alone and uncomprehending, at the close. There is a tendency for visually over-determined, humanly under-realised productions to blunt the psychological complexities of this narrative, downplaying also any implied social critique. An acclaimed recent Zurich Opera show was part commedia dell’arte, part Punch and Judy, while William Kenrtridge’s much-travelled Salzburg elaboration places the action in the context of the First World War. From my rather distant perch in the rear stalls, tonight’s offering seemed more in the nature of an un-costumed, essentially un-choreographed concert performance, the grafted-on video element projected above and behind the orchestra. Hence the otherwise puzzling absence of more comprehensive credits for the creative team.
Prime mover Ilya Shagalov was videographer under Kirill Serebrennikov’s direction for last year’s visual re-imagining of Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony. This time he received top billing. The booklet available only in virtual form online contained the following observation attributed to Nina Guseva, his visual co-creator: ‘When Alban Berg wrote Wozzeck, he worked with fragments because Büchner left an unfinished play, a scatter of scenes. Berg stitched these together with music, and our project follows a similar logic: using contemporary tools to create a story told through fragments, images and traces of everyday life.’ Those snapshots proved static, albeit often flashing past at a speed which meant that only the essence of an invisible underclass existence could be grasped. The visual style was deliberately dour, a sort of rouged-up social realism with surtitles in mustard yellow, the latter challenging in a different way. Set in an undefined present day, the Berg / Büchner storyline was sometimes but not always alluded to directly. There was for example no military element to speak of, no barracks and no child. The more resonant optical effects were imported. An archetypal blood-red moon for the murder scene was scarcely original but cast its spell after so much sickly near-monochrome. As usual with such presentations those unfamiliar with the opera seem to have found it helpful. Others may have counted it a blessing that Wozzeck was not or not explicitly a migrant worker unlike his friend, Andres. For good or ill the score’s abundant opportunities for empathy and compassion were not milked.
Musically the rendering was top-notch, uneven only because some of the roles were performed by practised, sought-after exponents of them. Not that those who remained umbilically attached to the printed copy disappointed vocally. Most theatrically animated was Peter Hoare who has sung his sneering Captain all over the world, including with Brindley Sherratt’s less demonstrative Doctor. Wagnerian Christopher Ventris has long been go-to casting for the Drum Major. Having debuted her Marie in Graz this year, Annette Dasch was not entirely mellifluous, then again Marie rarely is and certainly isn’t written that way. French baritone Stéphane Degout was an intriguing choice for the title role. A refugee from art song, he began singing Wozzeck early this decade and brings a certain velvet. His tone has darkened but there’s less metal or wobble than with most exponents and his subtle, exacting approach worked superbly here.
The LPO excelled throughout. You rarely hear playing this good in the pit, with eruptive moments matched or even outpointed by the devastating chill of quiet strings. While there was a 15+ age restriction on account of nudity, violence, sexual content, domestic violence and ‘disturbing scenes that some audience members may find offensive or upsetting’, the most shattering effects were in the score itself. Shame about the marginalisation of the child and the premature applause at the close.
