Fun Facts

Fun Fact
When Lincoln Center Theater opened in 1965, its premiere production was an English translation of Büchner’s first play, Danton’s Death.

Fun Fact
Büchner’s Woyzeck contains large sections written in the Hessian dialect, making it particularly difficult to translate into English. Much of its dialogue is also steeped in Hessian folk songs, a body of music and poetry mostly unknown to English speakers.

Fun Fact
William Kentridge’s new production of Wozzeck for the Metropolitan Opera is not the first time the director has turned his creative eye toward Büchner’s story. In 1992, he worked with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company to produce Woyzeck on the Highveld, an adaptation set in a bleak industrialized section of 1950s Johannesburg. (Highspring Puppet Company is best known for its Olivier and Tony Award–winning work on War Horse.)

Fun Fact
When Karl Emil Franzos was entrusted with Georg Büchner’s papers 40 years after the playwright’s death, they were in a pitiable state. Moldy, covered in the remains of a mouse infestation, discolored, and brittle, they were barely legible. The papers containing the Woyzeck fragments had to be treated chemically before their faded ink was discernible. The author’s handwriting, which was both miniscule and messy, presented a further hurdle, as did Büchner’s tendency to write using a series of idiosyncratic abbreviations. In sum, we can hardly fault Franzos for misspelling the work’s title and transcribing “Woyzeck” as “Wozzeck.” Since Franzos’s edition was the one known by Berg, the opera preserves this misspelling in its title.

Fun Fact
Berg prepared a lengthy tract, “Practical Remarks on the Production of Wozzeck,” which he intended for distribution to opera houses mounting productions of his opera. In it, he offers detailed instructions on performance techniques, tempos, bowing directions, and much more. His staging instructions are particularly precise: In one example, he specifies exactly when the water at the pond should develop waves, crest, and subside.

Fun Fact
Even as late as two weeks before Wozzeck’s scheduled premiere at the Berlin Staatsoper, Berg feared that it would be cancelled. The Staatsoper’s general director, Max von Schillings, had resigned suddenly one week previously in response to bureaucratic entanglements, leaving the conductor Erich Kleiber—Berg’s champion—without a protector. Political factions on all sides jumped into the fray, with Kleiber’s opponents arguing that Wozzeck was a drain on the Staatsoper’s resources and should not proceed. The press supported this theory by circulating scurrilous rumors that Berg’s “unperformable opera” had required 137 full rehearsals. In reality, there were no more than 34 orchestra rehearsals.

Fun Fact
Wozzeck’s first performance in New York was conducted by Leopold Stokowski, known to Disney fans for his role in the 1940 animated film Fantasia.

Fun Fact
While struggling to find a publisher for Wozzeck, Berg decided to self-finance the printing of a vocal score for the work. There was just one problem: He had to borrow money from his sister’s friend in order to afford it. Happily, he soon had help repaying this debt—from none other than Alma Mahler, widow of the composer Gustav Mahler and a talented composer in her own right. Berg was so touched by Mrs. Mahler’s generosity that he dedicated the opera to her.