It's Terrific, But At Times Kosky Loses His Head

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday October 13, 1999

Reviewed by ROGER COVELL

WOZZECK

Opera Australia, Opera House, October 11

Opera as a genre began with fables of gods, kings, princesses and heroes. It was left to Alban Berg's Wozzeck in 1925 to introduce as its central figure not simply another upwardly mobile and dissident member of the European servant class (as in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro ) but a person at the very bottom of the social heap.

Wozzeck is a person of less than average intelligence who is, in addition, subject to paranoid delusions. He is the uncomplaining butt of jokes made by his regiment's captain and the sadistically manipulated research tool of the regimental doctor.

One of the contentious elements in Jonathan Summers's generally superlative portrayal of Wozzeck is that he lets us see from the outset how close the character is to mental disintegration. It is customary to emphasise in the opening scene Wozzeck's stoic, laconic traits, but Summers (presumably with the active encouragement of the director, Barrie Kosky) makes us instantly aware of a quaking instability in his hold on reality. His ample but soft-edged vocal tone, facial mobility and expressive eye movements are the mirror of a being near breaking point.

Kosky and his designer, Peter Corrigan, emphasise this by introducing from the first scene onwards a series of cut-outs, increasingly fantastic and monstrous, poked up and guided through slots in a raked, extended forestage. It is an effective way of illustrating the sub-text in Wozzeck's mind; it also largely solves the problem of how to achieve scenic variety in an area close to the audience's scrutiny and cut off from backstage resources.

At the same time, I appreciated the relatively relaxed tempo (specified in the score) at which the conductor, Johannes Fritzsch, began the opening scene. It is hard enough to perform the piece without whipping up virtuoso speeds where they are not called for. Berg, at this point, is faithful to the quasi-scientific detachment, the almost pitiless thoroughness with which Georg BuEchner's original play assembles its evidence of abuse and desperation.

The decision to place the orchestra behind the action at the rear of the stage is partly dictated by the need to find space for a large orchestra. It gives us more of the flavour of Berg's tirelessly inventive, richly detailed orchestral writing, though it prevents Fritzsch from exercising a conductor's normal degree of control over singers as well as players. Cues for the singers have to be left entirely to the prompter, Kate Young, operating from a niche at the front of the forestage.

An unsympathetic view might be that the decision also fulfils the normally unstated wish of many directors to subdue or minimise the inconvenient presence of the conductor. The orchestra becomes a background to the director's desire for maximum attention, a desire probably attributable to Kosky himself. Kosky mostly uses his opportunities responsibly and well, though in one instance at least he succumbs culpably to a director's fear of stillness on stage.

This occurs in the great D minor outpouring of feeling with which the composer's orchestra comments on the pity and terror of his drama in the transition between the two final scenes. Berg's orchestral interludes are partly intended to cover scene changes in an age of a more literal-minded theatre technique, but this one demands to be listened to without visual distraction.

Elsewhere, Kosky's over-anxious desire to achieve maximum impact for the opera and insufficient faith in the tremendous built-in power of music and text lead him into some changes of doubtful value.

The substitution of police for soldiers works reasonably well: the soldiers are, after all, represented as barracks-bound functionaries, but the change of drum-major (impersonated with suitably manic energy by Horst Hoffmann) into fireman is unconvincing. Wozzeck's murder of Marie is translated from a simple thrust of a knife into a horrific decapitation with an axe; and Kosky indulges in the Grand- Guignolish notion of having Marie's young son (admirably played by Joseph Salvat) unknowingly collect the head in a plastic carry-bag while missing the far more chilling ending with which Berg sends the boy after his companions to find the mother's body.

Elizabeth Whitehouse is a strong, positive presence as Marie, with a voice as forthright as her personality. The scenes involving her are some of the best examples of singer-director collaboration.

Richard Greager as the captain and, even more, Barry Mora as the doctor provide memorable characterisations in voice and acting; there is a fine Andres from David Collins-White. The performance is compelling and disturbing, as it should be, and introduces one of the century's greatest operas into Opera Australia's repertory just before the century ends.