Joel Sorensen as Andres and Franz Hawlata as Wozzeck in Act I, Scene 2 of Wozzeck, in San Diego, 2007
Scene change from the opening scene, in which WOZZECK has been patronized and verbally browbeaten by the CAPTAIN while the poor schlepp gives him his daily shave.
Scene 2 ("Andres")
Open countryside, the town visible in the distance. Late afternoon. ANDRES and WOZZECK are cutting sticks in the bushes.
WOZZECK: Hey, this place is cursed!
ANDRES [continuing to work]: Oh, nonsense!
Song, 1st stanza
A hunter bold I'd like to be.
Behind a gun a fan is free!
And so will I a-hunting go,
a hunting-go!
WOZZECK: The place is cursed! Can you see the pale patch across the grass where the toadstools are growing? In the evenings a head rolls about there! Once someone picked it up, thinking it was a hedgehog. Three days and nights later he'd kicked the bucket!
ANDRES: It's getting dark here. That's why you're growing nervous. Come on!
[Stops working and strikes a pose.]
Song, 2nd stanza
A hare in flight runs there by me,
and asks if I a hunter be.
I tell him yes, I like it fine,
but shooting, no -- that's not my line!
WOZZECK: Hush, Andres! That must be freemasons.
ANDRES: Song, 3rd stanza (beginning)
Two hares there were, upon the grass,
and eating all that hares could . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping]: It is! The freemasons! Be quiet!
[ANDRES stops singing, a little uneasy himself. Both listen intently.]
ANDRES [trying to calm WOZZECK -- and himself]: Why not sing with me?
[Continuing the song] And eating all that hares could ask,
they ate . . . so fast . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping; stamps his foot on the ground]: Hollow! It's all hollow! A chasm! It's cracking! Can you hear? There's something following us down there! [Terrified.] Let's go, quickly! [Tries to drag ANDRES off with him.]
ANDRES [restraining WOZZECK]: Hey, have you gone mad?
WOZZECK [stops]: It's suddenly gone quiet. And how oppressive it is. You feel like holding your breath. [Gazes around.]
ANDRES: What?
[The sun is just setting. The last bright rays touch the horizon in the most garish sunlight, after which the sudden twilight seems intensely dark.]
WOZZECK: A fire! A fire rising from earth to heaven and a turmoiol descending like the last trump. What a din!
ANDRES [feigning unconcern]: The sun has gone down, and now they're drumming back there.
WOZZECK: Quiet, everything quiet, as if the world were dead.
ANDRES: Night! We must go home!
[Both go off slowly.]
[Scene change. Orchestral postlude, and military music beginning behind the scenes.]
Scene 3 ("Marie")
Marie's room. Evening.
March [Military music is heard approaching.]
MARIE [at the window with her child in her arms]: Zing boom! Zing boom, boom, boom, boom! Do you hear, baby? They're coming there!
[The military music, with the DRUM MAJOR in the lead, arrives in the street outside MARIE's window.]
MARGRET [in the street, talking to MARIE through the window]: What a man! Like a tree!
MARIE [speaks out the window]: He stands on his feet like a lion!
[The DRUM MAJOR salutes MARIE, who waves back in a friendly manner.]
MARGRET : Oh, what a friendly look, neighbor! You're not usually so familiar!
Walter Berry (bs-b), Wozzeck; Richard van Vrooman (t), Andres; Isabel Straus (s), Marie; Ingeborg Lasser (ms), Margret; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Pierre Boulez, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1966
by Ken
Okay, this was supposed to be a "Boulez post," following up on last week's quick musical remembrance of the late composer-conductor. And sure enough, up above we've got Pierre Boulez conducting a scene from Berg's Wozzeck which I especially love -- the second of the five "character studies" that make up Act I, nestled between the scenes in which we're introduced first to Wozzeck himself (in the scene of his presumably daily humiliation by the Captain) and to Marie, the mother of his infant son -- which were among the scenes we listened to way in June 2011 in the preview posts "Berg's Wozzeck -- (1) Introducing Marie" and "'Wretches like us' -- Berg's Wozzeck: (2) Introducing Wozzeck" and the main post, "'Wretches like us' -- class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's Wozzeck."
Somehow, though, in the course of gathering materials to present this weird and wonderful scene, the post turned more Wozzeck-y.
Maybe you had to be around in 1966 to appreciate how remarkable it was that this recording was made as a result of the enormous international acclaim showered on the Paris production of Wozzeck that Boulez had been conducting. After all, it had been only a year since the first stereo recording -- and only second-ever recording of any kind -- of Wozzeck, the one conducted by Karl Böhm for DG with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Evelyn Lear as Wozzeck and Marie. (Its predecessor was Columbia Masterworks' live recording of the concert performance by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic with Mack Harrell and Eileen Farrell -- a performance I still love.)
NOWADAYS THIS MIGHT NOT SEEM SO EXTRAORDINARY . . .
. . . but back then record companies were pretty much paralyzed by the commercial realities of spending money on a piece with, presumably, as limited sales potential as Wozzeck. It was a great stretch to imagine a recording being made by something resembling "popular demand," or at least "artistic demand," especially a mere year after DG had made its beautifully cast, conducted, and produced one.
Among the things I mentioned we would surely want to dip into in any proper musical remembrance of Boulez are his recordings of both Berg operas, this Wozzeck and the much later one, also made in Paris, of Lulu -- the first-ever recording of the complete three-act opera with Act III realized by the composer Friedrich Cerha. (We should give DG credit for following up its Wozzeck with a Lulu also featuring the team of Böhm, Lear, and Fischer-Dieskau, also a still-estimable performance, but of course at the time all that was available for performance was the two acts completed by the composer.)
Scene 2 is a "character study" of Wozzeck's friend Andres, who is barely a character in the opera, and it really doesn't advance the "plot" in any noticeable way. But it does give us a feeling, sensory as well as emotional, for the shadowy and frightening world poor Wozzeck lives in. And I'm afraid this scene is as far as we're going to go into the opera today, though for more of it you're encouraged to revisit the 2011 posts.
Naturally, as soon as I targeted this scene, I knew we would have to go back to the DG Wozzeck as well, if only for the stunning Andres of Fritz Wunderlich. The scene, after all, is built around thd little ditty Andres sings to occupy himself and keep himself grounded while performing this idiotically mindless task, whatever the hell it is, that he and Wozzeck are performing. And it's hard to imagine that the ditty has ever been or ever will be better sung than it was by Wunderlich.
Only then I decided to cast the net a little wider. First, to include the scene as peforrmed in Christoph von Dohnányi's more extroverted, more boldly colored Wozzeck, and then to resample the 1980 Met broadcast Wozzeck with José van Dam in the title role, one of the nicer performances I can recall from James Levine.
Never fear, we'll be getting back to Boulez and Berg. The original Wozzeck booklet contained a really illuminating piece by Boulez about the way the opera is constructed and the difficult choices this forces on performers, with some wonderful description of a number of individual scenes. At some point I think it will be interesting to listen to some of this scenes illuminated by Boulez's descriptions. And Lulu, well, yes, we'll have to go there too.
But for now, let's just stick with poor Wozzeck and Andres out in the field cutting their sticks.
BERG: Wozzeck: Act I, Scene 2 ("Andres"),
with preceding and following scene-change interludes
Scene change from the opening scene, in which WOZZECK has been patronized and verbally eviscerated by the CAPTAIN while giving him his daily shave.
Scene 2 ("Andres")
Open countryside, the town visible in the distance. Late afternoon. ANDRES and WOZZECK are cutting sticks in the bushes.
WOZZECK: Hey, this place is cursed!
ANDRES [continuing to work]: Oh, nonsense!
Song, 1st stanza
A hunter bold I'd like to be.
Behind a gun a fan is free!
And so will I a-hunting go,
a hunting-go!
WOZZECK: The place is cursed! Can you see the pale patch across the grass where the toadstools are growing? In the evenings a head rolls about there! Once someone picked it up, thinking it was a hedgehog. Three days and nights later he'd kicked the bucket!
ANDRES: It's getting dark here. That's why you're growing nervous. Come on!
[Stops working and strikes a pose.]
Song, 2nd stanza
A hare in flight runs there by me,
and asks if I a hunter be.
I tell him yes, I like it fine,
but shooting, no -- that's not my line!
WOZZECK: Hush, Andres! That must be freemasons.
ANDRES: Song, 3rd stanza (beginning)
Two hares there were, upon the grass,
and eating all that hares could . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping]: It is! The freemasons! Be quiet!
[ANDRES stops singing, a little uneasy himself. Both listen intently.]
ANDRES [trying to calm WOZZECK -- and himself]: Why not sing with me?
[Continuing the song] And eating all that hares could ask,
they ate . . . so fast . . .
WOZZECK [overlapping; stamps his foot on the ground]: Hollow! It's all hollow! A chasm! It's cracking! Can you hear? There's something following us down there! [Terrified.] Let's go, quickly! [Tries to drag ANDRES off with him.]
ANDRES [restraining WOZZECK]: Hey, have you gone mad?
WOZZECK [stops]: It's suddenly gone quiet. And how oppressive it is. You feel like holding your breath. [Gazes around.]
ANDRES: What?
[The sun is just setting. The last bright rays touch the horizon in the most garish sunlight, after which the sudden twilight seems intensely dark.]
WOZZECK: A fire! A fire rising from earth to heaven and a turmoiol descending like the last trump. What a din!
ANDRES [feigning unconcern]: The sun has gone down, and now they're drumming back there.
WOZZECK: Quiet, everything quiet, as if the world were dead.
ANDRES: Night! We must go home!
[Both go off slowly.]
[Scene change. Orchestral postlude, and military music beginning behind the scenes.]
Scene 3 ("Marie")
Marie's room. Evening.
March [Military music is heard approaching.]
MARIE [at the window with her child in her arms]: Zing boom! Zing boom, boom, boom, boom! Do you hear, baby? They're coming there!
[The military music, with the DRUM MAJOR in the lead, arrives in the street outside MARIE's window.]
MARGRET [in the street, talking to MARIE through the window]: What a man! Like a tree!
MARIE [speaks out the window]: He stands on his feet like a lion!
[The DRUM MAJOR salutes MARIE, who waves back in a friendly manner.]
MARGRET : Oh, what a friendly look, neighbor! You're not usually so familiar!
Walter Berry (bs-b), Wozzeck; Richard van Vrooman (t), Andres; Isabel Straus (s), Marie; Ingeborg Lasser (ms), Margret; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Pierre Boulez, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1966
[with track changes at [2] the start of Scene 2, [3] the start of the orchestral postlude, and [4] the start of Scene 3] Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Wozzeck; Fritz Wunderlich (t), Andres; Evelyn Lear (s), Marie; Alice Oelke (ms), Margret; Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1965
Eberhard Wächter (b), Wozzeck; Horst Laubenthal (t), Andres; Anja Silja (s), Marie; Gertrude Jahn (ms), Margret; Vienna Philharmonic, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded December 1979
[with track changes at [2] the start of Scene 2, [3] the start of the orchestral postlude, and [4] the start of Scene 3] José van Dam (bs-b), Wozzeck; Jon Garrison (t), Andres; Anja Silja (s), Marie; Isola Jones (ms), Margret; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine, cond. Live performance, Mar. 8, 1980
A QUICK HARKBACK FOR WOZZECK AND MARIE
Before hearing the scenes in full, we heard these snippets from the scenes surrounding the above in the June 2011 Wozzeck post.
• Wozzeck, from Act I, Scene 1
Under verbal siege from the Captain, Wozzeck finally tries to stand up for himself, beginning with the opera's most famous phrase, "Wir arme Leute," "We poor people."
WOZZECK: What is to be poor! You see, sir, it's all a matter of money, money.
But if you haven't any, just try bringing children into the world in a moral fashion then.
We are flesh and blood as well.
Certainly, if I were a gentleman and owned a hat and a watch and a monocle and spoke in a genteel way, then I would be virtuous too.
It must be a fine thing to be virtuous, sir. But I'm only a poor fellow.
People like us are always unfortunate in this world and the next.
I believe that if we went to heaven, we should be set to work to help make the thunder.
-- Wozzeck, to the Captain, in Act I, Scene 1
(translation by Sarah E. Soulsby for Decca Records, 1988)
Mack Harrell (bs-b), Wozzeck; New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, live recording of a concert performance, 1951
• Marie, from Act I, Scene 3
After enthusiastically admiring the passing soldiers, Marie turns her attention to her baby.
What will you do now, poor lamb?
You have a child but no man!
Ah, why worry, poor mite?
I'll sing through the live-long night.
Hush-a-bye baby, my darling boy,
nobody cares about us!
Josephine Barstow (s), Marie; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002
THE JUNE 2011 WOZZECK POSTS
(1) Friday night preview: "(1) Introducing Marie" (the Act I solo scene, including the lullaby)
(2) Saturday night preview: (2) " 'Wretches like us' -- Introducing Wozzeck" (the scene with the Captain)
(3) Sunday post, " 'Wretches like us' -- Class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's Wozzeck"
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