Keith Warner’s Olivier Award-winning 2002 production of Wozzeck was one of the most knuckle-whitening in the Royal Opera’s repertoire and it returns for this revival with increased intensity.
Alban Berg’s 1925 work tells the story of a poor, downtrodden soldier (Simon Keenlyside), who is driven to murder Marie (Karita Mattila), his unfaithful girlfriend. Warner sets the action in a dirty laboratory where mould creeps up the white-tiled walls and large specimen tanks contain surprising and disturbing contents.
This is the arena in which a pompous Doctor (a terrific John Tomlinson) performs medical experiments upon Wozzeck, and in which Wozzeck performs his final, fatal experiment upon Marie. Stefanos Lazaridis’s clever mirrored backdrop creates some visually thrilling tableaux but Warner never loses sight of the wrenching humanity, brutal humour or strange, blood-drenched poetry that give the work its impact.
With his bumbling, hangdog gestures and luscious voice, Keenlyside makes an ideal Wozzeck, while Karita Mattila thrills as an intense and neurotic Marie. Her desperate affection for her tiny little boy (Sebastian Wright) is perhaps the most emotionally charged aspect of the show.
Berg’s score contains both swirling late-Romantic harmonies and jagged atonality, and conductor Mark Elder brings them together with wonderful clarity to support and propel the drama. There are tickets from just £3; top price is £65. It’s the bargain of the year.
In rep until Nov 15, Royal Opera House.
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