For an unfinished play, Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck (1836) has inspired more adaptations than almost any other German drama. But it is Alban Berg’s 1925 opera, Wozzeck, which has had the deepest impact. The combination of Buchner’s dark, inflammatory themes and Berg’s atonal score resulted in what is generally regarded as the first avant-garde opera.
The story of an impoverished soldier driven to hallucinatory madness, murder and self-destruction by a series of humiliations, it is a complex critique of the professional classes—including the military and medicine—that equated wealth and privilege with moral probity.
The ENO production is directed by the theatrical wunderkind Carrie Cracknell. Cracknell’s recent production of A Doll’s House at the Young Vic had critics trying to outgun each other with superlatives. While her youth and inexperience in opera has driven doubters to question her suitability for the task, the 33 year old has assembled a sterling cast which includes US bass-baritone James Morris, bringing his imposing Wagnerian presence to the UK stage for the first time in 17 years.
ENO, 11th to 25th May
The story of an impoverished soldier driven to hallucinatory madness, murder and self-destruction by a series of humiliations, it is a complex critique of the professional classes—including the military and medicine—that equated wealth and privilege with moral probity.
The ENO production is directed by the theatrical wunderkind Carrie Cracknell. Cracknell’s recent production of A Doll’s House at the Young Vic had critics trying to outgun each other with superlatives. While her youth and inexperience in opera has driven doubters to question her suitability for the task, the 33 year old has assembled a sterling cast which includes US bass-baritone James Morris, bringing his imposing Wagnerian presence to the UK stage for the first time in 17 years.
ENO, 11th to 25th May
