Wozzeck Splashes

The New York City Opera's new director, Joseph Rosenstock, wanted to make a splash with his first new production. He picked just the right high-diving opera to do it with: Alban Berg's 27-year-old atonal masterpiece, Wozzeck. Ever since Dimitri Mitropoulos' stunning concert version in Carnegie Hall last year (TIME. April 23), critics and audiences have been clamoring to see a stage version.

Last week, after a sell-out first performance, the splash almost swamped Director Rosenstock with criticism. None of the critics doused Wozzeck itself; their damp words were reserved for City Opera's new English-language production.

The chief trouble was the setting--admittedly difficult inasmuch as Wozzeck has 15 swiftly changing scenes. Designer Mstislav Dubojinksy's stage was a stylistic hash laid out on two levels, with more exits, real and imaginary, than the auditorium of City Center itself. Among other things, the lighting was not subtle enough to disguise the unlikely fact that the pond in which Wozzeck drowns is atop both the room where his girl Marie lives and the room where the sadistic Doctor experimented on him.

For the title role, Rosenstock borrowed Baritone Marko Rothmuller, a onetime Berg pupil, from London's Covent Garden (from which he also borrowed the English translation). Rothmuller was a sympathetic character as the cloddish, hallucinated soldier, but vocally he turned out to be a bellower. Soprano Patricia (The Consul) Neway was miscast as Marie: she was more of a heart-wringing Tosca than the faithless tart she was supposed to be, and she screeched in her attempt to be heard over the orchestra.

What did come off, despite all misfortunes, was Alban Berg's uniquely powerful score. Even the Daily News had to conclude that "the amazing thing . . . was to find Wozzeck so holding, in spite of the handicaps of its presentation."

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