Wozzeck

In the organizer's words:

"Ours is a wretched man in this world and the other!"

The opera tells the story of the simple soldier Wozzeck, who is humiliated and exploited by his surroundings and abused by the doctor for pseudo-scientific experiments. Driven by crushing poverty and pressure from his superiors, he is increasingly plagued by delusions. His relationship with his lover Marie, overshadowed by jealousy and mistrust, also fails to give him any stability. When Marie enters into an affair with the drum major, Wozzeck's despair erupts in a tragic act of violence.

Alban Berg's Wozzeck is considered a milestone in the history of modern opera. In the exciting score, which met with considerable resistance at its premiere in 1925, a wide variety of forms - character piece, symphony, invention - and compositional techniques merge to create a unique sound. Berg thus deliberately tackled one of the central "opera problems" of his time, namely "to give the theater what the theater is, i.e. to shape the music in such a way that it is aware of its obligation to serve the drama at every moment." For example, Berg uses the entire spectrum between spoken language, Sprechgesang and singing in infinitely refined differentiation to describe the extreme emotional states of his protagonists. As only Mozart before him, according to opera researcher Uwe Schweikert, "he succeeded in simultaneously serving the drama and holding on to the autonomy of absolute music."