One of the darkest operas in the repertoire … directed by Michel Fau: it is necessarily intriguing beyond everything. The man who likes to disguise himself as Bette Davis or Carmen, who gives luster to forgotten boulevard authors, here he is, throwing himself into this tragedy of news that is Wozzeck, this sordid dark and bitter drama, with two key roles, Stéphane Degout in Wozzeck, Sophie Koch in Marie, in this great provincial opera that is the Capitol of Toulouse.
Michel Fau, the unexpected of this so dark opera
And, let’s say it right off the bat, it’s a success. Who will be able to surprise those who would have of Michel Fau only the image described above, less those who know his excessive side, his love also, sincere as much as connoisseur, of the opera even if it is defined first of all? man of the theater. And it is besides by bringing together theater and opera – that is to say the play by Büchner (1837) which inspires the libretto of Berg (1925) – that Fau signs a Wozzeck that will mark us.
Wozzeck (Stéphane Degout) in front of the skeletons and his son (Dimitri Doré) C) Mirco Magliocca
The project is also the last of a trilogy he put together in Toulouse, proposed by the director of the Capitol, Christophe Ghristi, and which also included two masterpieces by Richard Strauss, Ariadne in Naxos and Elektra (1912 and 1909) or, at least in the case ofElektra, an opera which, by its disproportion, belongs to expressionism, this German current which crossed the arts and not only painting. Except that Elektra confronts the Greek tragedy, the story of Electra who wants to kill his mother murderer of his father, the grandiose Shakespearean, the excess of destinies and feelings. Wozzeck, on the contrary, a very small story of bloody jealousy, where a poor mediocre slaughter, in a mystical crisis, his companion who deceived him. But here it is: there is madness in Wozzeck, hallucinations …
Marie (Sophie Koch) flirts with the major (Nikolai Schukoff) in front of Wozzeck, the child, the Companion (Guillaume Andrieux) and an angel C) Mirco Magliocca
Beautiful role-taking of Stéphane Degout, hallucinating sets
We will better understand, from the interview he gave us, what interested Fau in Wozzeck. And we will also understand that a Stéphane Degout, under his direction, a Degout who dreamed of this role, is there magnificent, powerful and sonorous voice, who won in the bass, a Degout who, soldier of the 1830s in Germany , at goose step or at attention, looks like a living puppet, with the same jerky gestures. There is, moreover, in Fau’s black reverie, so well helped by the hallucinating sets of Emmanuel Charles and by the deliciously diverted costumes of David Belugou (with “real” expressionist lights by Joël Fabing, which turn purple , in raw green or pink nail polish), this dimension, in all the characters, of an automaton, perhaps inspired by the mechanical doll of Tales of Hoffmann of Offenbach (which Fau played in a recent short film): thus Marie and her friend Margret in their green and red folk dresses, or the captain with the falsetto voice (Wolfgang Ablinger-Speracke, very good), blond and looped, a sort of Baron Münchhausen, also close to the figures of the merry-go-round.
Woyzeck, posthumous work (1837) by the writer-meteor Georg Büchner, inspired by a news item that took place ten years earlier: a weak-minded soldier from his garrison ends up killing his companion who cheated on him with a sergeant major. The work (of Berg) ends with the silhouette of this son they had out marriage and who will forever be the son of an assassin.
Wozzeck (Stéphane Degout) and the doctor (Falk Struckmann) C) Mirco Magliocca
Very strong images also come from the strange text of Büchner
Room decor. A poor, white bed, a boy in a nightgown, crooked walls, opening onto a space that is a sort of imaginary and dangerous sea, or the unconscious. The child, so small in the opera, is played here by a smooth-faced actor in his twenties, Dimitri Doré (much applauded in his role of mute), confronted with his anxieties including his father, Wozzeck, may be part of it. Fau constantly relies on Büchner’s text, on the oddities of this text, the meaning of which could be erased, but precisely: when one reads it (as with a Kleist, a Grabbe, these German authors of romanticism) things arise from ‘a poetic language that could be compared to the unexpected of a Musset (Dame Pluche was frolicking in the alfalfa) and this is what Fau puts into images with a confusing intelligence: thus, first amazement, at the end of five minutes a sort of monstrous form seems to grow and swell behind the bed of the terrified child and becomes … an immense hare black that takes up part of the space. Now here is Andres, Wozzeck’s companion-hunter, who sings a rhyme about hares while Wozzeck feels a fire rising from the earth …
Wozzeck, the Child (Dimitri Doré), the hare and Andres (Thomas Bettinger) C) Mirco Magliocca
The Razor Man Race
Madness of Wozzeck but against a background of mad society. We would never stop citing the many striking images that Fau and his team invented, this red moon (As the moon rises red Marie murmurs before being killed) looking like a fairground ball, these caps lined up in front of the stage like severed heads while the soldiers of the garrison sleep one in a heap on top of the other. The terrible sight of the desiccated woman (A woman who died in 4 weeks. Cancer uteri) that the child discovers in bed before the doctor comes to the autopsy (Where are you going so quickly, honorable lord Clou-de-Cercueil? said the captain to the doctor and, seeing Wozzeck running in too: He runs like a real razor open to the world -car Wozzeck acts as a barber- and we would cut ourselves off to touch it), this woman that the doctor is going to autopsy and who, obviously, terrorizes the child.
An unfinished text, full of puzzles
As the lizard with the appearance of fish which runs on the wall terrorizes him, the disturbing Gypsy who emerges from the sea (from the unconscious?) And who will later prove to be a companion of Le Devoir. Fau grabs these images with which Büchner has stuffed his text – an unfinished text, the typhus having killed the 23-year-old poet, reduced to often dialect, Hessian, Alsatian abbreviations, of which the publisher Karl Emil Franzos will succeed in making a work little by little. nearly coherent only 40 years later – and he amplifies them, magnifies them, giving them that nightmare sense that Berg’s squeaky music further reinforces. Admirable also, this hand red with blood, like that of Lady Macbeth, which sinks into the water of a pond -Wozzeck, totally won over by madness, drowns there after his murder, in the cowardly indifference of the captain and the doctor: it moans … like a man is dying. Someone is drowning – Strange, the red moon and the gray mists. Do you hear? The moans again – Less loud, now quite quiet – Come on, come quickly (They run away)
Reading from Marie (Sophie Koch) to her son (Dimitri Doré) C) Mirco Magliocca
Wozzeck, revolutionary work?
Falk Struckmann reveals a somewhat muffled tone like a doctor. Nikolai Schukoff is a very good Drum Major and Thomas Bettinger is a good looking Andres. A little behind the two companions. Sophie Koch, quickly controlled vibrato, almost unrecognizable, is a carefree Marie, who follows her path of freedom, and the voice, despite a few shouted highs, lends itself to this art of talk-sing (Sprechgesang) which requires a beautiful talent of actress. Leo Hussain, the conductor, chooses to highlight the mixtures of timbres, the acidity of the writing, reinforcing the side revolutionary of Wozzeck (which Berg defended himself), and putting in it an energy where the musicians of the Capitol follow him. Sometimes we would like sometimes more flexible, more serene moments, as in these stumbling dances (waltz rhythms) where the accordion emerges, a true instrument of expressionism.
The orphan child on his great wooden horse
Wozzeck does not end with the death of his “hero” but with a strange scene where the one who is presented in the title of the characters as the child of Mary, although he is also Wozzeck’s, is confronted with other blond children (with dark-ringed eyes), out of a Tim Burton film or such little aliens from the British film of the 60s, The village of the damned. The children sing a circle then address the son of Mary: You, your mother, she is dead. Indifference of the child. She is over there, stretched out on the path, near the pond. The child is riding on a stick: Hop, hop, hop, hop. This is Büchner’s text and Berg’s didascalies.
Murder under the Red Moon: Wozzeck (Stéphane Degout) and Marie (Sophie Koch) C) Mirco Magliocca
With Michel Fau the child, frightened and already in his own life, is on a large wooden horse, at the same time of merry-go-round and similar to those which support, on the equestrian statues, of the small kings. Indifference may be feigned. As if the offspring of a mad father and a mother of little virtue could only find his way by killing them. Embodiments of the skeletons that also haunted his nightmares. As repentant Mary said to her (shortly before her death) while reading the Bible: There was once a poor child and he had no father and no mother. Another rereading of Wozzeck, by a victim and liberated son, at what price!
Wozzeck by Alban Berg, directed by Michel Fau, musical direction by Leo Hussain. Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, since November 19. Next performances on November 23 and 25 at 8 p.m.