Twenty years after it was last ridden there, the legendary Wozzeck, by Alban Berg (1885-1935), is presented by the Lyon Opera, at the opening of the season, in a new production that can be seen until Monday, October 14. Inspired by the unfinished piece. Woyzeckby Georg Büchner (1813-1837), the story of this opera in three acts that lasts just over ninety minutes could be summarized as that of a banal drama of jealousy in a context of social oppression. Informed by his captain, flanked by a wicked doctor, that his wife Marie is cheating on him with the drum major of the local barracks, soldier Franz Wozzeck ends up killing her before committing suicide.
Pushed to the limit by those who exert professional or emotional influence over him, the man, subject to hallucinations (with the color red as dominant), commits the irreparable without truly understanding what is happening to him. Such a mystery opened the way to multiple scenic proposals, linked or not to the aesthetics of the original period (expressionism) or to the place of creation in 1925 (Berlin). This, meticulously developed by Richard Brunel (who has directed the Lyon Opera since 2019), is based on a very personal interpretation of theatrical data (didacies, dialogues) that never clash with the text and that often reduce the context to its simplest simplicity. expression.
moonless “blood red”, Apart from the supernatural vision of the main protagonist, there is no pond in which to drown for the murderer in search of the murder weapon, but a modest sink in which to clean the bloody knife… In fact, the set, clinically illuminated by Laurent Castaingt Above all, it materializes an inner world, with a coherence that is affirmed in the long term like that which operates in the score from reminiscences and premonitions.
We know that Alban Berg based the dramatic articulation of his opera on the use of musical forms (passacaglia, scherzo, etc.). Like the third act, which takes up the form of invention in each scene (“Invention on a Theme”, “Invention on a Note”, “Invention on a Rhythm”…), Richard Brunel’s direction could be described as a “ “Invention about a script.” ”. At first, the process is a little confusing. the famous “Langsam, Wozzeck, langsam.” (“Slowly, Wozzeck, slowly”), with which the opera begins, is not an incitement to caution formulated by the Captain to the soldier while he shaves him, but an attempt to curb the ardor (“How soft!” ») who was not selected among four candidates for a medical experiment whose setting will be the opera.
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