Wozzeck

In the organizer's words:

Wozzeck lives in exploitative, precarious circumstances and is dependent on the favors of others. Wozzeck gives what little he has to provide for Marie and their child. Society is jaded, (not only physically) violent and oppressive. Wozzeck, who considers it impossible to escape the fate of the "poor people", is plagued by delusions that make him look at life with different eyes and force him to act.

"Man is an abyss, you feel dizzy when you look down", says Wozzeck in Alban Berg's opera, expressing what must have been on the minds of many people at the premiere of the work in 1925, seven years after the end of the First World War. Even today, "Wozzeck", which is based on a fragment of Georg Büchner's play from 1837, concerns us: Loneliness, capitalism and the pressure to perform cause individuals to break apart and conjure up fatal events. Berg's expressive and extremely multifaceted composition is considered to be the first full-length stage work of atonality and features musical constructions from the Baroque to the late Romantic period, as well as early forms of the twelve-tone technique. The voice is heard in various forms between speech, rhythmic declamation and arioso singing. The multi-award-winning director Martin G. Berger (winner of the 2020 DER FAUST theater prize in the "Best Director of Musical Theater" category, among others) is dedicated to this social and emotional drama set to music and will stage this key work of modernism in all its radicality together with Sarah-Katharina Karl, who has been celebrated as "Stage Designer of the Year" by "Opernwelt" magazine, among others.