Wozzeck

"I love music that dares to expose human emotions, and Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck' does this in a harrowing way," says Stefan Herheim, artistic director of the MusikTheater an der Wien. The work is based on an authentic case: on June 3, 1821, the unemployed wigmaker Johann Christian Woyzeck stabs his lover to death. After a three-year trial to determine his sanity, he is declared guilty despite doubts and publicly executed. Stefan Herheim also sees Berg's opera as the story of an execution: "In 15 musical scenes, Wozzeck experiences his existence as a hellish ride in a society that turns him into a murderer." The starting point for his production is the practice of killing people in the name of justice, which is still legitimized in the USA and elsewhere: In a death chamber, the condemned Wozzeck is to be executed by lethal injection. As soon as the poison reaches his bloodstream and the music begins, memory, fear, delusion, hope and despair mingle to create surreal images - a grotesque death revue at the moment of death.

Further information at operamrhein.de.