The production of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck, playing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, is sensational, mind-bending, ground-breaking. As ground-breaking as Berg’s confrontational atonal style was when it burst into an unsuspecting, post-romantic world in Berlin 1925. A Berlin still reeling from the aftermath of the First World War, trying to cope with citizens back from trench horrors.
Why ground-breaking? Because producer, William Kentridge, a South African Johannesburg based artist, has delivered a production that not only sizzles with life and new insights. He takes the medium of opera to a completely new level. “It’s Opera, but not as we know it, Jim”.
Think about it. He was the guy who last year produced the Met’s The Nose, Dmitri Shostakovich’s first opera. Anyone who can make a graphically presented nose the star of the show has some magic up his sleeve. It didn’t really have a singing role.
