The world is on fire. A head rolls along the forest floor. Fearsome voices emanate from the earth, whispering of blood, murder, and death. Are these psychotic hallucinations? A metaphor for a world in shambles? Both? Alban Berg’s Expressionist opera Wozzeck is an audacious setting of Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, a work that was still controversial at the time of the opera’s composition (despite having been written 85 years earlier) and which portrays the world as grotesque, meaningless, and cruel. The opera begins with a poor soldier being bullied by his captain. It reaches its climax when the soldier’s apocalyptic visions compel him to destroy the one thing he truly loves. In between, the soldier finds himself increasingly isolated by the casual cruelty of his military and medical supervisors, and when he meets his pitiful end, it is under the dispassionate gaze of the blood-red moon.
The director of the Met’s new production, acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge, understands the play’s absurdity and cruelty not as an indictment of a particular era but as a chillingly constant element of human history. The story is thus equally evocative whether set in 1830s Prussia (as in Büchner’s play), World War I–era Flanders (as in the Met’s new production), 1950s Johannesburg (as in Kentridge’s previous Woyzeck adaptation with Handspring Puppet Company), or today. Kentridge’s visually arresting environment for Berg’s opera utilizes projected films, charcoal drawings, old photographs, maps, and images of battle-decimated landscapes. Through projections that not only erode and destroy images but also reconstruct them in distorted forms, Kentridge suggests a visual metaphor for one of the work’s fundamental concerns: the generative but toxic force of humiliation.
This guide is intended to help students confidently study one of the most fiercely complex operas of the 20th century. With an introduction to Wozzeck’s story, themes, and style and activities designed to bring the opera’s music and drama into the classroom, the materials on the following pages will help students engage with Berg’s opera in an accessible yet thought-provoking way. By using Wozzeck to forge interdisciplinary classroom connections and inspire critical thinking, this guide will give students the tools to approach, appreciate, and analyze works of modern art both on and off the opera stage.
