Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 14 December 2025
Alban Berg: Wozzeck
As one of the most important music dramas of the modern era, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck holds a secure place in history. But how often does one become truly aware that, despite its atonal language and despite early forms of the twelve-tone technique developed by Berg’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg, this work is rooted in late Romanticism?
To experience this, it takes a conductor who penetrates the score as deeply as Christian Thielemann, who brought the opera back into the repertoire at the Berlin State Opera exactly 100 years to the day after its premiere on 14 December 1925.
This interpretation did not come quickly. When Thielemann conducted Wozzeck for the first time 35 years ago in Turin, he later admitted that he underestimated the work, “brushing over it lightly,” which nonetheless worked insofar as the opera sounded modern, as expected.
That a far more layered reading of this complex score requires extensive rehearsal is easy to imagine, especially since, as Thielemann said at the anniversary celebration, this is not a work that can be mastered at a desk, but only through making music. Erich Kleiber, who conducted the premiere, is said to have demanded 150 rehearsals for a piece that was long considered unperformable—figures that are almost unthinkable today.
The major investment in this revival has clearly paid off. From the podium of the Staatskapelle Berlin, the star conductor unfolds the music in all its facets: expressive intensity, chamber-like intimacy, and shattering drama. His Wozzeck sounds both romantic and modern.
With good reason, the Berlin State Opera celebrated the 101st performance of this production—revived in 2011 and renewed also in the ensemble—like a premiere, complete with a champagne reception. Andrea Breth’s staging remains gripping and timeless.
The new listening experience is felt most strongly in the interludes, especially the first two, where violin, viola, and cello step forward as soloists with a wealth of striking melodies, partly accompanied by harp sounds, and joined by clarinet, bassoon, flute, and trumpet among the winds.
Every instrument, from contrabassoon to xylophone, has its moment in this finely chiselled, meticulous performance, not to mention accordion and guitar in a tavern scene on stage.
The late-Romantic qualities revealed by Thielemann come through particularly strongly in the scenes with Marie, Wozzeck’s partner and the mother of his small son: in the lullaby for the child and in her monologue “Und ist kein Betrug in seinem Mund erfunden worden.”
Anja Kampe portrays this woman in all her ambivalence with her resilient soprano, convincingly embodying both the loving mother and the life-hungry woman who allows herself sexual adventures. At times she erupts in despair; at others she is quietly weighed down by what burdens her soul. The virile, testosterone-driven Drum Major with whom she betrays Wozzeck seems tailor-made for Andreas Schager, who dominates the stage with the powerful projection of his tenor.
Andrea Breth’s production of the tragedy based on Georg Büchner’s dramatic fragment—originally created for the Berlin Schiller Theater, then a temporary home—works extremely well in its restrained approach with the new musical interpretation, moving hand in hand with the music.
In the superb Simon Keenlyside, Breth’s Wozzeck is from the very first scene and throughout a tormented man, met on all sides with indifference, mockery, and scorn. He does not submit without protest to humiliation by the Captain (imposing in stature and vocal power: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) and the Doctor (aptly repellent: Stephen Milling), whom he serves, but his irritability steadily grows.
When he feels betrayed by Marie and is forced to watch her give herself to another before his eyes, the limit is reached. He can no longer endure it and becomes a murderer.
Just as Wozzeck is denied a life of freedom from the outset, living instead like a slave to ruthless exploiters, Martin Zehetgruber’s set presents a space enclosed by walls of bars. In chamber-like scenes with few characters, the action is confined to just a few square metres, evoking a prison.
After the desperate act, a bomb seems to explode in the orchestra pit: the entire orchestra rises in unison, building to the threshold of pain and erupting in what feels like quadruple fortissimo.
This is the beginning of the end. A woman named Margret, with whom Wozzeck dances in the tavern, discovers blood on him, and he can no longer find the cursed knife, the murder weapon. Anna Kisjudit, whose powerful, dark mezzo recently made a strong impression as Erda in Wagner’s Ring, lends this tiny role the weight of a luxury casting.
Singing and playing are outstanding throughout, down to the smallest roles, and—as always under Thielemann—everyone sings and speaks with exceptional clarity of text.
After the hero’s final suicide, his little son stands alone on stage with his hobbyhorse. The children who matter-of-factly tell him of his mother’s death (chorus and children’s chorus preparation: Dani Juris) sing closely packed together from the pit. It is hard to imagine a more harrowing ending.
After Die schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss, this deservedly acclaimed performance marks another event of epoch-making significance. In quick succession, Christian Thielemann—still not long in office at the Berlin State Opera—has mastered two extremely demanding challenges in exemplary fashion. That alone would be enough to recommend this production as “Opera of the Year.”
