ConcertPulse
Alban Berg: Wozzeck
Elbphilharmonie, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
As part of the Hamburg International Music Festival, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra devotes itself to an epoch-making opera under the direction of its principal conductor Alan Gilbert: Alban Berg’s »Wozzeck«. With its sensitive and completely honest portrait of a society undermined by militarism and the abysses into which it thrusts people, the opera became one of the greatest achievements of the Weimar Republic – an achievement which continues unabated to this day. In the band of opera stars, who embody the characters in this harrowing drama, one stands out in particular: Matthias Goerne in the title role of a young soldier on the verge of insanity. Started immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, Alban Berg only found the necessary peace to complete his first opera after his military service in the Austrian army. Against the backdrop of the war years, Berg felt all the closer to his protagonist and the opera ultimately became a sounding memorial against militarism and its social impacts. A whole series of productions in opera houses in the German-speaking region soon followed the potentially scandalous Berlin premiere in 1925 – until the piece was banned by the Nazi regime as »degenerate art«. However, this could not stop the global success of this opera.