Περιγραφή
Καλλιτέχνες
In 1917, the composer and soldier Alban Berg took advantage of a long leave from the front to finally tackle a project that had been occupying him for three years. In May 1914 he had seen a play by Georg Büchner in which a simple soldier is harassed from all sides and in the end resorts to brutal violence. Berg immediately discovered in it a subject for an opera: “Wozzeck”. The fact that he himself had had experiences as a soldier in the meantime may have brought Berg even closer to the subject. The actual, immediate impetus, however, came from the play itself. Büchner’s rapid exchanges of words reduce all the emotions to the essentials, to the basic driving forces of frustration, despair, hopelessness and love. And the succession of short scenes makes the play seem like a finished libretto. But what probably appealed most to Berg was the depiction of a society of the lost. The Salzburg Festival put “Wozzeck” on the program 100 years after Alban Berg’s first work on opera. Graphic artist and video artist William Kentridge created an emotionally gripping production, baritone Matthias Goerne delivered a deeply humanistic interpretation of the lead role with his beguiling timbre, and conductor Vladimir Jurowski on the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic virtuously brought out the breathtaking modernity of the score. |