The Canadian Opera Company’s latest staging of “Wozzeck,” by the Austrian composer Alban Berg, is filled with one haunting image after another.
William Kentridge’s production, now running at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, thrusts the audience into the midst of the First World War.
Medics with gas masks roam Sabine Theunissen’s set, a barricade consisting of furniture piled haphazardly into a mound. The lighting, by Urs Schöenbaum and Mikael Kangas, is often brooding, punctuated by moments of explosiveness. And Kentridge, a South African artist renowned for his expressionistic prints, evokes an eerie wasteland with drawings of death and decay projected onto a large screen wrapping around the stage.
This visual design all comes together to pummel the senses. It’s one of the highlights of this “Wozzeck” (a co-production between the COC, the Salzburg Festival, the Metropolitan Opera and Opera Australia), which, though imperfect and perhaps too ambitious for its own sake, is sustained by a top-notch cast in impressive vocal form.
Kentridge’s staging of Berg’s 20th-century masterpiece, based on the unfinished play “Wozyeck” by Georg Büchner, depicts a cruel world devoid of hope and humanity.
Its title character (played by baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky) is a lowly soldier whose continual degradation at the hands of those around him leads to madness.
Wozzeck’s sadistic Captain (a terrifying Michael Schade) dismisses him as nothing more than an illegitimate child. Meanwhile, his doctor (Anthony Robin Schneider) seemingly exploits Wozzeck for his own benefit.
At home, Wozzeck is further humiliated when he learns that his partner Marie (Ambur Braid), the mother of their young child, is having an affair with a Drum Major (Matthew Cairns, projecting debonair).
Unfolding over 15 scenes, the opera is spread across three short acts. And throughout these 90 minutes, Kupfer-Radecky does exceptional work presenting Wozzeck’s plight. His antihero, voice coloured with agony, has slowly been weathered down by those around him. Soon, his emptiness turns into despair, which then transforms into anger.
I wish there were more scenes between Wozzeck and Marie, helping to establish their relationship. But Kupfer-Radecky and Braid, a soprano whose gorgeous tone embraces the music like a sculptor’s hands moulding clay, are such an electric pairing that they can convey their characters’ dynamics with efficiency and ease. (The pair are reuniting after appearing together in the COC’s “Salome” in 2023.)
“Wozzeck” will never truly be an accessible opera for many audience members. Berg’s score is often atonal, favouring expressionism over traditional melodies. At times, the music can be grating — the strings, roiling and temperamental, clash with the militaristic brass lines.
But Berg wasn’t looking to craft a work that leaves audiences humming tuneful arias as they exit the opera house. Instead, the music is meant to serve as a portal into Wozzeck’s mind.
In the pit, COC music director Johannes Debus conducts with confidence, even if the orchestra’s energy, at the Sunday matinee I attended, somewhat waned during parts of the second act.
My biggest issue with Kentridge’s production, though, co-directed with Luc De Wit, is that it’s stuffed with too many creative interventions that threaten to overwhelm the already intense material.
The ensemble, faces covered with gas masks, are ever present, with Kentridge and De Wit seeming to suggest that they’re the ones telling this story, framed like an allegorical warning. But these background characters are played so broadly that the production sometimes veers into the absurd.
There’s also the rather peculiar decision to have Wozzeck and Marie’s child portrayed by a puppet (brought to life by Brooklyn Marshall). In his program notes, Kentridge suggests that casting a child actor in the role would be distracting, especially because it would be an older child playing a toddler.
But employing a puppet instead of a real child strips “Wozzeck” of its humanity. The opera’s final scene, with the couple’s young son alone onstage, should drive home the material’s core themes of power, social stratification and animalistic cruelty. In this production, however, the devastating scene loses its impact.
That could be said about this whole production, as well, one that’s thrilling to watch and hear but is so overwhelming that it clouds the key ideas central to the opera.
