WOZZECK

The Met’s Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to lead a powerful new production of Berg’s shocking modern masterpiece.

This production of Berg’s modern masterpiece Wozzeck is directed by innovative artist, filmmaker, and director William Kentridge. Kentridge moves the setting to pre-WWI Germany. There is in that milieu an atmosphere of a society coming to its end, of atavistic impulses and decadent meaninglessness coming through the characters. Berg wrote this into the music, and the exceptional singers brought it to life in full-bodied performances. Baritone Peter Mattei stars as the title character, making his role debut as the tormented soldier whose madness and paranoia ultimately drive him to murder. The cast also features soprano Elza van den Heever as Wozzeck’s dissatisfied lover, Marie, and tenors Gerhard Siegel and Christopher Ventris and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as his ruthless persecutors.

“William Kentridge’s staging is dense and dazzling… a big hit in New York… Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the superb conductor, drawing sounds both powerful and delicate from the terrific Met orchestra.” - Financial Times

“A brilliant, thoughtful, singing actor with a beautiful voice, Mattei is all lyricism in this go-round, singing all the notes, whether full-value or Sprechstimme.” - Bachtrack