I'm not much of an opera fan. I get far more transported by abstract instrumental music than from a bunch of overstuffed prima donnas screaming their guts out. I realize that's more a confession of my personal limits than a meaningful critique of Western civilization. After all, opera is the apex of our culture, blending the arts of poetry, acting, singing, dance, painting, costuming, lighting and design.
There's a good reason why opera seats can cost more than Superbowl tickets. And I'll even admit that many operas move me - the rollicking spirit of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, the devout morality of Beethoven's Fidelio, the visceral power of Verdi's Otello, the brooding mysticism of Wagner's Gotterdammerung, the gossamer wonder of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. Yet, I constantly find myself laboring to wrest musical gems from silly plots, cardboard characters and insipid lyrics.
Even the finest operas seem utterly unworthy of their magnificent music. But then there's Alban Berg's Wozzeck - a shattering plunge to the core of the human soul that transcends entertainment without a shred of pretension.
The roots of Berg's opera stretch back a century before its creation to , when Johann Christian Woyzeck, a sometime soldier, barber, drifter and all-around loser, was publicly beheaded for murder, despite a then-novel defense of insanity stemming from the oppressive turns of his failed life.
The troubling issues of the case gripped Georg Buchner, a young physician, political radical and budding playright, who died of typhoid in at age 23, leaving unfinished a gritty play envisaging the social pressures Woyzeck had faced.
