Opera Review: The Ringer Cycle

Matthias Goerne's surprise Wozzeck at the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

He knows where his towel is: Matthias Goerne in the title role of Wozzeck.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

At 2:10 yesterday afternoon, the Metropolitan Opera announced that Thomas Hampson had withdrawn from Wozzeck. Mr. Hampson's substitute would not be the scheduled (and already contracted) cover, but baritone Matthias Goerne. Mr. Goerne, who has sung the title role to acclaim at other houses, was in New York to sing a lieder recital at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night. Smoke signals went up on the Internet, and a hastily written press release was slipped into thousands of copies of Playbill.

Soldier Dodges Bullet

Mathias Goerne steps in for Thomas Hampson in Wozzeck.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Getting the axe: Thomas Hampson has withdrawn from tonight's Wozzeck due to illness.
Matthias Goerne will sing the title role in Berg's opera.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera has a major casting change in tonight's first season performance of Wozzeck: the title role.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Wozzeck

Berg's blood-soaked psychodrama returns to the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Deborah Voigt and Thomas Hampson make their role debuts in Wozzeck March 6.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

Thomas Hampson makes his first appearance in the title role of Wozzeck, the story of a soldier whose lowly life is nothing but suffering. Deborah Voigt appears as Marie, his perpetually unfaithful common-law wife. (Neither artist has sung these difficult roles before.) James Levine is scheduled to conduct these performances.

Festival Preview: The Ringstrasse Cycle

Carnegie Hall opens Vienna: City of Dreams.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Carnegie Hall moves to the Ringstrasse for
Vienna: City of Dreams, this year's music festival at the famous venue.
Photo manipulation by Paul J. Pelkonen.

This week marks the opening of Vienna: City of Dreams, a three-week Carnegie Hall festival focusing on the artistic and musical legacy of the capital of Austria. In addition to six concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic (two of them featuring performers from the Vienna State Opera) the series includes lectures, films and an exploration of an age before World Wars, when Vienna was the crossroads and cultural capital of central Europe.

Concert Review: The Defense of the New

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Soprano Barbara Hannigan as the Police Chief from Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre.
Image from BarbaraHannigan.com.

Some composers still need an advocate. Today's audiences are filled with skeptics, put off by the idea of atonal music and names like Berg, Webern and Ligeti. On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, the current music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. This program cemented Sir Simon's reputation as a fearless advocate for these new sounds, interpreted through the rich, velvety texture of this top-flight ensemble.

Opera Review: It's a Gutter Ballet

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Wozzeck at Lincoln Center.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Baritone Simon Keenlyside sang Wozzeck at Lincoln Center.

On Monday night, Esa-Pekka Salonen led a concert performance of Alban Berg's Wozzeck, featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra and Simon Keenlyside in the title role. Although played in a concert setting, the singers eschewed music stands, playing out the drama in front of the orchestra in a narrow, claustrophobic acting space along the lip of the stage in Avery Fisher Hall.

Berg's opera is a study in contrasts. To set Woyzeck, the sprawling, chaotic play by Georg Büchner that is the opera's source material, the composer relied on an absolute, rigid use of forms. The first act is composed as a suite, with each short scene forming a dance movement of sorts. The second is a miniature symphony of despair. For the work's apocalyptic last act Berg created a series of "Inventions," with each scene based on a different type of musical element.

This rigorous approach paved the way for twelve-tone composition and the serialism that followed, but each piece of math music has its own radiant inner beauty. Mr. Salonen conducted a burly reading of the score that highlighted the chamber-like details and witty parodies that lie buried in this brilliant work. Compressing the three acts into a tight 95 minutes, he drove the performance with deadly precision, allowing the luminous moments in the score their own chances to shine.

Mr. Keenlyside, fresh from his run as Prospero in the Met's new production of The Tempest lay down his staff for Wozzeck's knife, inhabiting the soldier's madness for a harrowing three acts. Indeed, his Wozzeck seems unbalanced from the first few moments, jittering and twitching in the fields with Andreas, and barely interacting wih Marie and their child, here played by empty air.

Opera Review: The Bloody Return of James Levine

Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera

The Doctor (Walter Fink, standing) reminds Wozzeck (Alan Held) to eat his beans.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2005 The Metropolitan Opera

A revival of Wozzeck is always cause for anticipation and dread: anticipation for those who love the knotty, disturbing opera, and dread for those putting it on who hope that people will come see it. Berg's only completed opera is a work of the highest genius, but it is rarely big box office.

This revival of Mark Lamos' stark, claustrophobic production featured bass-baritone Alan Held in the title role: the hapless soldier driven to murder his common-law wife by jealousy, madness, and forces beyond his control. Mr. Held staked his claim to the role in the opening scene, defending himself from the sarcasm and abuse of his Captain (Gerhard Siegel) even as he held a straight razor to his superior's throat. The scene made effective use of lighting design, as Wozzeck's shadow towered above the pompous officer, a harbinger of the bloodshed to come.

Waltraud Meier's searing interpretation of Marie was long overdue at the Met. You can see from her performance that she too is trapped in this life, caught between Wozzeck's growing madness and the advances, bribes and threats of the Drum Major (Stuart Skelton), Ms. Meier portrayed Marie with full emotional investment, singing with fearless leaps into the complex texture of Berg's sprechstimme. She was particularly moving in the Act III prayer, which serves as a calm prelude to her murder at Wozzeck's hands.

Mr. Held sang with dark nobility in the opening act of the opera, creating a defensive barrier around the character that was slowly torn down by the Captain, his Doctor (the excellent Walter Fink) and his rapidly deteriorating relationship with Marie. Things shattered completely when he was cuckolded in the second act, and then beaten brutally by the Drum Major. In the final act, he brought whoops of despair and madness into his performance, making his final drowning a poignant, pathetic spectacle.


Mr. Held and Ms. Meier were well matched, and supported by committed performances from Gerhard Siegel as the Captain and Walter Fink as the Doctor. House favorite Wendy White made the most of the brief role of Margret, and tenor Stuart Skelton made a compelling company debut as the Drum Major, the pompous bullying ass who thinks that he's the hero of the opera.

Last night, the Metropolitan Opera House was (just about) full, with opera-goers who gave an enthusiastic welcome to the return of music director James Levine after a two-month absence. Mr. Levine didn't disappoint, leading the 113-piece Met orchestra in a Wozzeck that shrieked, snarled and hummed for 90 minutes. It was a performance of great clarity, accelerating in the right places, and slowing for the work's few poignant moments. As the conductor on this train-ride through hell, there is no better.