OPERA
A Circus with Death as the Ringmaster
Fine singers, players can’t surmount William Kentridge’s conceits
BY ELI JACOBSON
South African artist William
Kentridge returned
to the Metropolitan Opera
for the third time presenting
a local iteration of his 2017
Salzburg Festival production of Alban
Berg’s “Wozzeck.” Kentridge’s
multimedia approach (combining
live action with a stage filled top
to bottom with non-stop projected
films and images) worked for his
production of Shostakovich’s “The
Nose” because the Gogol short
story it is based on is an absurdist
satire with a fantastical, illogical
plot.
Büchner’s “Woyzeck” and Wedekind’s
“Earth Spirit” and “Pandora’s
Box” are 19th and early 20th
century naturalistic tragedies
dealing with real people in a real
environment suffering under cruelty
and oppression. Berg’s later
operatic adaptions, “Lulu” and
“Wozzeck,” are faithful adaptations
centering on the role of the individual
exploited in a society driven by
money, power, and sex.
Kentridge is not a dramatist
but a visual artist. He constructs
elaborate visual spectacles where
animated cartoons and projected
images tell the story rather than
the performers.
These elaborate expressionist
visual fantasias on themes from
the opera fail to place the singing
actors in a relatable environment
or social context — so the human
drama falls flat.
The new “Wozzeck” works somewhat
better than his “Lulu” because
Kentridge and his set designer, Sabine
Theunissen, and projection
designer, Catherine Meyburgh, are
no longer relegating the singers to
the sides of the stage so that the
centerstage projection screen isn’t
blocked by inconvenient people.
In “Wozzeck,” while the performers
run up and down the vertiginous
catwalks of Theunissen’s set,
animated cartoons of a general
marching, zeppelins, bombs falling,
wounded officers, and desolate
fens are projected on a cyclorama
in the background. These projections
Peter Mattei and Elza van den Heever in William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s
“Wozzeck.”
are not so distracting during
the musical interludes between
scenes, but one wishes they would
stop in the dramatic scenes so that
we could focus on the performers.
The setting of the opera is pushed
forward to the World War I era during
active combat — the choristers
are dressed (by costume designer
Greta Goiris) as injured soldiers
with crutches and bandages, while
extras dressed as medical orderlies
roam the stage moving props
and scenery. Once again, Kentridge
and his co-director Luc De
Wit fail to give the singers (many
in role debuts) specific personal direction
enabling them to overcome
the sensory overload surrounding
them.
What is an abject failure is an
idea purloined from Anthony Minghella’s
“Madama Butterfly” production
— Marie’s child is played
by a puppet. In the Minghella
“Butterfly,” it is a controversial
conceit, but the puppet Trouble is
KEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA
recognizably human and given detailed
movements and emotional
responses. The puppet representing
Marie’s child has an oversized
featureless head resembling a gas
mask with goggle eyes and a tiny
rag doll body. The puppeteer is
present and visible during intimate
conversations between Wozzeck
and his common law wife Marie,
so that they lose intimacy. The
puppet is particularly alienating
in the heartbreaking final scene,
where the local children (offstage
voices here) brutally tell Marie’s
child that his mother is dead and
he follows them on his toy horse to
view her corpse (setting off on his
own life road of emotional trauma,
poverty, and neglect). There is no
human child visible onstage as
this grotesque toy wriggles about
in the hands of two puppeteers, so
we don’t care.
Musically, this was a superbly
played and sung performance. The
two leads, Peter Mattei as Wozzeck
and Elza van den Heever as Marie,
are making role debuts. Mattei
found lyricism in the most jagged
12-tone writing, and Van den
Heever’s silvery, focused soprano
displayed a remarkable purity of
attack and radiance of tone. But
Mattei seemed oddly muted for
such a charismatic singing actor:
Wozzeck’s descent into alienation
and madness didn’t intensify as
humiliations rain down on him.
Van den Heever’s Marie lacks sensuality
and vulnerability. Both
singers failed to project the desperation
of their characters though
occasionally they touched notes of
genuine despair.
Gerhard Siegel made a vivid
Captain, a master of Sprechstimme
who somehow wasn’t upstaged by
the cartoons projected on a screen
behind him. Christian Van Horn’s
mellow voiced Doctor seemed too
normal and insufficiently sinister.
Heldentenor Christopher Ventris
was solidly in command as
the cock-of-the-walk Drum Major.
Tamara Mumford as Margret and
David Crawford as an Apprentice
managed to make something vivid
of their cameo roles.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s
out gay music director, was a master
of detail and dynamics, eliciting
gossamer threads of sound to
thundering fortissimos from a reenergized
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
Complex layers of Berg’s
orchestral writing emerged translucently
clear and finely detailed
under his baton. Nézet-Séguin
never overwhelmed the singers,
with orchestral volume maintaining
a lightness of touch amid all
the darkness. But all these superb
musicians were reduced to providing
a soundtrack to Kentridge’s
sound and light show.
“Wozzeck” will be transmitted in
HD to movie theaters worldwide
on Saturday, January 11 at 12:55
p.m. Clever camera direction should
edit the ADD-inducing production
into something less alienating and
more focused on individuals. For
screening details, visit tinyurl.com/
t934kkp .
January 16 - January 2 30 9, 2020 | GayCityNews.com
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