It has been a bit of a wait, but South African artist William Kentridge’s production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck has finally had its Canadian Opera Company debut following outings at fellow co-producing companies, the Salzburg Festival (premiere, 2017), Metropolitan Opera and Opera Australia (both 2019). Its seamless amalgam of fine art, video, stagecraft, music and drama results in one of the most convincing artist-driven concepts to have graced Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre stage (seen Apr. 27th).
Kentridge has taken World War I as his primary inspiration. Berg began to write the opera in 1914, just before the war’s outbreak, completing it in 1922. Its story and soundworld are inextricably linked to the plight of the downtrodden and the psychological effects of poverty and exploitation, all expressed in a new musical language practically invented by the composer. Sprechstimme (sung speech) is used liberally, with singers speaking their text rhythmically, or in a manner close-to-singing. The orchestra underpins all of this in the most expressive way imaginable with huge, roof-raising climaxes as well unbearably touching melodic fragments.
(top-left) Krisztina Szabó (Margret) and Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Wozzeck) in Canadian Opera Company’s Wozzeck. Photo: Michael Cooper
Gas masks are a unifying visual element, variously worn by the chorus, actors and prominent in the films and projections. A recurring animated figure who looks like a version of Wozzeck, or possibly the son he has with Marie, also wears a gas mask, and hobbles across the screen as do many of the real people on the stage. This is one small way in which technological elements meld with live action in terms of visual language, and actual movement.
The period of the work’s composition is further evoked by Kentridge’s charcoal drawings which are reminiscent of German Expressionist George Grosz’s work. They take the form of caricature cartoons jerking across a screen stage left and are also used to extend the space in deep perspective when projected across an entire upstage scrim. In lesser hands, this could have turned into sensory overload, but the visuals are so of a piece aesthetically, and so connected to the text and thoughts of the singers, that it all holds together.
The set consists of a complex arrangement of narrow ramps, platforms and piles of wooden furniture. Amongst the chaos, a couple of playing areas are well-defined. The aforementioned screen provides one focal point, the other being the Doctor’s cabinet where he lectures Wozzeck on all manner of experimental diets. Later, multiple members of an onstage band comically emerge from the cabinet for the bar scene. Despite the busyness, the eye is never in doubt about where to focus its attention.
Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Wozzeck) and Anthony Robin Schneider (the Doctor) in Canadian Opera Company’s Wozzeck. Photo: Michael Cooper
As Wozzeck, German baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky’s is not overly histrionic, centring his portrayal squarely in his clear delivery of the text. His descent into murdering Marie, “the only thing I have” feels like the inevitable result of his humiliation at the hands of the Captain, Doctor and Drum Major with whom she has an affair. Kupfer-Radecky, and perhaps the directorial team, do not impose an interpretation, leaving room for the audience to draw its own conclusions about his tragedy.
Soprano Ambur Braid as Marie showed why she is now in such demand internationally as an interpreter of early 20th-century German repertoire. She offers ample, expressive tone in Marie’s relatively ‘lyrical’ passages, especially her delivery of the Bible verses about the adulteress who was forgiven and Mary Magdalene. In contrast, she projects bravado as she throws caution to the wind to embark on the tryst with the Captain that ultimately leads to her murder by Wozzeck. Braid is such a magnetic performer and we can only hope she will return to Toronto soon given her success here, following a searing Salome in 2023.
Anthony Robin Schneider (the Doctor) and Michael Schade (the Captain) in Canadian Opera Company’s Wozzeck. Photo: Michael Cooper
Veteran tenor Michael Schade delivers a vivid, intensely unpleasant Captain, nailing his Sprechstimme insults in the opening scene with keen verbal point. Tenor Matthew Cairns was a properly trumpeting, preening Drum Major, showing off an ever-developing, dramatic vocal instrument. Debuting Austrian bass Anthony Robin Schneider boasted voluminous tone and an appropriately insufferable pompous manner. Tenor Owen McCausland (Andres), mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó (Margret) and tenor Michael Colvin (Fool) all contributed to the overall excellence.
The production incorporates three actors and a puppeteer to great effect. The actors (Lisa Auguste, Nicholas Eddie and Jonas Trottier) sport the ubiquitous gas masks and are costumed in what look like nurse’s aprons with a prominent red cross. Their jerky movements, sometimes on crutches, conjure victims of war and its disastrous effects on all humans.
Brooklyn Marshall (puppeteer) and Ambur Braid (Marie) in the Canadian Opera Company’s Wozzeck. Photo: Michael Cooper
Brooklyn Marshall manipulates a puppet that represents Wozzeck and Marie’s son. As Kentridge mentions in his director’s notes, the team decided against casting a real child given the awkwardness around watching “a 12-year-old pretending to be a three-year-old, (where) we are acutely aware that someone is pretending to be someone else and we are pretending not to notice.” Indeed, the final tableau of the puppet riding a broomstick hobby horse, unaware he is now alone in the world, was entirely affecting and avoided sentimentalism.
With all the visual and sonic magnificence onstage, we cannot overlook the contributions emanating from the pit. The COC Orchestra under their music director Johannes Debus delivered this magnificent score with searing intensity from its sweeping harp solos to crashing tutti climaxes.
This Wozzeck marks the COC’s return to presenting provocative stagings at the top international level. In these straightened times for opera in North America, we can only hope the wait won’t be too long for more productions of a similar impact.
Canadian Opera Company’s Wozzeck continues its run at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts through May 16. www.coc.ca
