Staring into the Abyss with Wozzeck

Wozzeck is a musical and theatrical labyrinth in which the human mind slowly disintegrates. In the last opera of the season Opera Ballet Vlaanderen presents a production of Alban Berg’s opera, directed by Johan Simons, in which its disorienting character is pushed to its extreme. A performance that pushes the spectator above the edge of the human abyss.

© Annemie Augustijns

Alban Berg's Wozzeck, the first atonal opera in history, is among the most poignant and radical works in the operatic repertoire. No comforting melodies, no heroic arias -- but shrill dissonances and musical fragmentation. Berg's atonal sound language pushes the listener away, creates distance, even discomfort -- and yet that is precisely what brings us closer to Wozzeck. The pushing and pulling of the music creates room for empathy. For Wozzeck, for Marie, and for the child they will leave behind.

Wozzeck was once, a quarter of a century ago, the very first opera I saw live. For an entry-level opera, perhaps not the most obvious choice, but that lack of an opera past was perhaps also an advantage. I went in with an open mind, not knowing what to expect and, like the audience at the premiere in 1925, entered Neuland. It was a theatre experience that alienated, amazed and moved -- but above all, one that was fascinating enough to make me want to experience it again. Good art works on several levels. It impresses on first encounter and, as you delve into it, only gets more interesting.

© Annemie Augustijns

Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is not an opera you passively undergo. It is a sonic assault, based on an unfinished play by Georg Büchner. A story of power, madness, humiliation, and the loss of humanity, carried by music that often seems to resist beauty itself.

Johan Simons is no stranger to Wozzeck, having directed Büchner’s play three times before. Simons is a director with a distinctive and recognizable style, marked by social engagement, aesthetic austerity, and psychologically charged acting. In his work, he often seeks the moral and human core of a text, stripping classic repertoire of excess romanticism or decorative frills. For Opera Vlaanderen, he now tackles Alban Berg’s opera for the first time. In his earlier productions of Büchner's Woyzeck, he avoided reducing his protagonist to mere victim or perpetrator, people become perpetrators because they are victims he apparently wants to say, and here too he zooms in not on individual guilt, but on a world in which human dignity is fragile.

© Annemie Augustijns

Simons situates the protagonist’s mental decline within a scenography that makes Wozzeck’s psychological space tangible. The stage is bathed in light — a white space with fragmented walls that don’t connect, like a labyrinth with no center, an institution with no escape. Light projections and subtle shifts suggest the walls are moving, as if Wozzeck lives in a world slowly slipping off its axis. In this clinical white environment — both open stage and closed sanatorium — the boundary between reality and delusion is extremely blurred. Everything becomes internal experience. A stage image as a mental state: a frozen psychosis in light and line. A story of spiritual darkness unfolds on a stage that, through its brightness, feels all the more oppressive.

From the very first scene — Wozzeck smearing himself with blood, as if Marie’s murder has already happened — it’s clear we’re witnessing a tragedy waiting to unfold. This is not a spontaneous descent into madness, but a predestined collapse, a logical consequence of a merciless world that leaves no space for someone like Wozzeck. “Der Mensch ist ein Abgrund” the title character says — and in Simons’ direction, the abyss, along with the characters and their flaws, is brought palpably close. The audience is granted a glimpse into that abyss — and, as every good abyss should, it stares back.

© Annemie Augustijns

Simons presents the story with simple, direct images. As often in his work, anecdote is absent: he abstracts, distills. For the climax — Marie’s murder — he opts for a theatrically sublimated image. No blood, despite its abundance in the rest of the performance, and no physical depiction of violence. This somewhat mutes the dramatic peak, making the tragedy less a sum of what preceded it. That scene could have been a bit more confrontational.

Notably, the children — who in the libretto appear only at the end — are given a place on stage from the beginning. Here, they serve as silent commentary: a mute Greek chorus, the future observing the wreckage of the present. They react but do not act. This adds a reflective layer to the performance and places the adult world under a magnifying glass of childlike wonder and helplessness. Their presence makes Wozzeck’s world all the more harrowing, but also offers a hint of hope. Simons has stated that he hopes the audience leaves with a heavy heart. That he succeeds is a testament to the production — and yet, thanks to the children, a touch of solace sneaks in. A suggestion that, despite everything, a future is possible that doesn't resemble the present.

© Annemie Augustijns

The title role finds a sublime interpreter in Robin Adams. Adams makes Wozzeck a real Mensch: broken and anxious but not without humor, a three-dimensional character. His performance is raw, impassioned, and deeply felt. Adams stood out even within a strong cast.

Marie, sung by Magdalena Anna Hofmann, is also a figure living on society’s margins. She has an illegitimate child, is supported by Wozzeck who gives her money from time to time, and seeks something resembling life in the arms of the Drum Major. Hofmann portrays her as a woman full of longing, pride, and despair. Unlike Wozzeck, she clings to life. Her voice — powerful enough for Isolde or Brünnhilde — crawls through Berg’s score like through a funnel: a monumental force that penetrates musical fabric with razor-sharp focus. She, too, is an abyss — but one that fights against her own depths.

© Annemie Augustijns

Opposing this dramatic gravity are grotesque supporting roles that, despite their cruelty, offer some comic relief. James Kryshak’s Captain and Martin Winkler’s Doctor are caricatures in an absurd nightmare — cold, ludicrous figures of power whose indifference only deepens Wozzeck’s disorientation. Samuel Sakker, meanwhile, makes the Drum Major a convincingly egomaniacal seducer.
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The orchestra, under the baton of Alejo Pérez, delivers a tour de force. The sound is robust, uncompromising, but also rich in color and nuance. The brass section in particular are having the time of their lives. They push themselves gaudily forward in the orchestral sound. They are like shadows closing in around the characters, roaring, whispering and shuddering through a sound world that is like an expressionist painting in sound. And under Pérez's direction, everything in that painting, from screaming colours with the broad brush to the fractal structures of the pencil, takes on its weight.

© Annemie Augustijns

Opera Vlaanderen deserves high praise for programming — after Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza — yet another 20th-century masterpiece that scrapes, stings, and confronts (perhaps only Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann could have ended the opera season more explosively). Wozzeck is not a comforting piece, but a revealing one — an opera that forces insight. A work that, in a strong staging like this, will haunt the mind for days. Next year, Opera Vlaanderen ends the season with Carmen — another opera about a jealous man who kills a woman, but one with which it’s perhaps easier to ease into summer. That final observation, it should be clear, is by no means a suggestion to avoid Wozzeck. The lover of passionate theater and intense musical drama knows what to do: head to Antwerp or Ghent, where this magnificent production runs until the end of the month.

WOZZECK, Alban Berg / Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Antwerpen 1 June 2025 (premiere)

Conductor Alejo Pérez
Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen
Regie Johan Simons
Scenography Sammy Van den Heuvel
Costume design Greta Goiris, Flora Kruppa
Lights Friedrich Rom
Choir conductor Jan Schweiger
Child Choir conductor Hendrik Derolez
Dramaturgy Koen Tachelet, Maarten Boussery
 
WOZZECK Robin Adams
MARIE Magdalena Anna Hofmann
HAUPTMANN James Kryshak
DOKTOR Martin Winkler
DRUM MAJOR Samuel Sakker
ANDRES Hugo Kampschreur
MARGRET Lotte Verstaen

From Woyzeck to WozzecK

Woyzeck is an unfinished play by German author Georg Büchner (1813-37), written around 1836 but not published posthumously until 1879. It tells the story of Franz Woyzeck, a poor soldier who succumbs to social pressure, humiliation and medical experiments. His increasingly deteriorating mental state eventually leads to an act of desperation: he murders his beloved Marie, who has been unfaithful to him.

When Alban Berg saw a performance of Büchner’s Woyzeck on the eve of the First World War, he reportedly immediately envisioned it as an opera. For the title of that opera, Wozzeck, he adopted a transcription error from an early edition of the play. The opera premiered in 1925. The First World War, during which Berg served and suffered a psychological breakdown, delayed the creation of Wozzeck.

Left: Alban Berg with members of the cast of Wozzeck at the premiere in 1925. Right: Leo Schützendorf as Wozzeck

The piece—both play and opera—is based on a true story: in 1821, former soldier and wigmaker Johann Christian Woyzeck murdered his wife and was sentenced to death. Woyzeck had taken part in Napoleon’s Russian campaign and was discharged from the army in 1818. He returned home to Leipzig, likely suffering from PTSD and a bipolar disorder. Because Woyzeck declared that he committed the murder because voices in his head told him to do so, questions arose about his legal accountability. Appeals and requests for clemency delayed the execution but could not prevent it. ​The execution of Johann Christian Woyzeck on August 27, 1824, in the center of Leipzig, was witnessed by 5,000 people. One spectator noted in his diary:
"The delinquent walked calmly alone to the scaffold, knelt, and prayed, and with great skill the executioner struck off his head."

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- Wouter de Moor