A Chat Between Wozzeck Director Emma Griffin and Curtis Institute of Music Director of Publications Laura C. Kelley 02-27-2009 Wozzeck Director Emma Griffin. Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, about the personal struggles of a soldier, feels particularly contemporary with obvious resonances to post-traumatic stress disorder among today’s soldiers. That relevance is part of the opera’s appeal to stage director Emma Griffin, who was inspired by the universal nature of the story. “Like all great art,” she said, “this opera is as relevant now as the day it was written and will continue to tell us something important about the human condition.” However, relevance is not a production concept, and Ms. Griffin wasn’t interested in a literal take on the 1925 opera. Instead she wanted to maintain the militaristic environment—marked by the loss of individuality against the attention to rank—and focus on the main character’s hallucinogenic visions, a fundamental tool to describe a cruel world. So how did she approach staging a challenging and complex opera that she considers the equivalent of King Lear in its powerful theatrical stature? By thinking of the opera as a landscape, built through staging a series of small moments and events that, in the end, create a large, complex picture. The elements of Wozzeck’s landscapes come from the apocalyptic visions of the title character: fire in the sky, a ring of toadstools, noises underground. They may be invisible to everyone else in the opera, but Ms. Griffin chose to believe them. “By framing Wozzeck’s trauma and fear through his hallucination prophecies,” she said, “the opera examines our collective capacity for cruelty through blindness to individual suffering.” She quotes Jean Genet: “The world is dying of panicky fright.” Wozzeck is the only one to recognize that fact. “This awful burden, coupled with the impact of his poverty,” Ms. Griffin said, “fragments him from Marie—the only force in his life who can offer him stability.” Wozzeck’s personal destruction is also the profoundly universal tragedy of a working man, anonymous in his world. “This is the story of someone very poor with no choices, unable to see that actions have consequences,” Ms. Griffin said. “This is the downfall of both Marie and Wozzeck. “The play on which the opera is based, Büchner’s Woyzeck, is remarkable in part because it was really the first piece of western drama to say, ‘The tragedy of a common man is just a important as the tragedy of a king.’ This is a story that we need to be reminded of again and again,” she said, “and this is why the psychological landscape of Berg’s opera is so moving.” While the Curtis cast was becoming deeply grounded in the music through its own rehearsals, Ms. Griffin discussed the music with conductor Corrado Rovaris and studied the score with Curtis opera and voice coach David Moody. “The music is tremendously powerful,” Ms. Griffin said. They examined the musical connections to her theatrical impulses, such as the conversational vocal patterns of Berg’s rhythmic Sprechstimme and the structural connections that Berg created between story and music. Her stage direction should, she said, make the audience hear the music more clearly by creating a series of images, like the sequence of storytelling images of stained-glass windows. “The music is complex and difficult, absolutely,” she said, “but always when I’m in the room, rehearsing, it becomes so clear, so alive and moving. The experience of live music is always so much more tactile, rich, and present than it ever is on a recording. And I think it’s an amazing gift that people get to experience this opera live.” Ms. Griffin is thrilled to have two Curtis alumni join the cast in lead roles, for the first time in recent memory. Shuler Hensley brings both acting and life experience to a demanding role that, Ms. Griffin notes, is not unlike his Tony-winning character of Jud in Oklahoma!—tortured and unhappy, yet capable of arousing incredible compassion.Jason Collins played the Drum Major with the Opera Festival of New Jersey in 2003, not long after graduating from Curtis. His “showy flair” caught the eye of the New York Times. — by Laura C. Kelley Special thanks to Laura C. Kelley and the Curtis Institute of Music for allowing the reprint of this article.
Wozzeck Director Emma Griffin.
Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, about the personal struggles of a soldier, feels particularly contemporary with obvious resonances to post-traumatic stress disorder among today’s soldiers. That relevance is part of the opera’s appeal to stage director Emma Griffin, who was inspired by the universal nature of the story. “Like all great art,” she said, “this opera is as relevant now as the day it was written and will continue to tell us something important about the human condition.”
However, relevance is not a production concept, and Ms. Griffin wasn’t interested in a literal take on the 1925 opera. Instead she wanted to maintain the militaristic environment—marked by the loss of individuality against the attention to rank—and focus on the main character’s hallucinogenic visions, a fundamental tool to describe a cruel world.
So how did she approach staging a challenging and complex opera that she considers the equivalent of King Lear in its powerful theatrical stature? By thinking of the opera as a landscape, built through staging a series of small moments and events that, in the end, create a large, complex picture.
The elements of Wozzeck’s landscapes come from the apocalyptic visions of the title character: fire in the sky, a ring of toadstools, noises underground. They may be invisible to everyone else in the opera, but Ms. Griffin chose to believe them. “By framing Wozzeck’s trauma and fear through his hallucination prophecies,” she said, “the opera examines our collective capacity for cruelty through blindness to individual suffering.”
She quotes Jean Genet: “The world is dying of panicky fright.” Wozzeck is the only one to recognize that fact. “This awful burden, coupled with the impact of his poverty,” Ms. Griffin said, “fragments him from Marie—the only force in his life who can offer him stability.”
Wozzeck’s personal destruction is also the profoundly universal tragedy of a working man, anonymous in his world. “This is the story of someone very poor with no choices, unable to see that actions have consequences,” Ms. Griffin said. “This is the downfall of both Marie and Wozzeck.
“The play on which the opera is based, Büchner’s Woyzeck, is remarkable in part because it was really the first piece of western drama to say, ‘The tragedy of a common man is just a important as the tragedy of a king.’ This is a story that we need to be reminded of again and again,” she said, “and this is why the psychological landscape of Berg’s opera is so moving.”
While the Curtis cast was becoming deeply grounded in the music through its own rehearsals, Ms. Griffin discussed the music with conductor Corrado Rovaris and studied the score with Curtis opera and voice coach David Moody. “The music is tremendously powerful,” Ms. Griffin said.
They examined the musical connections to her theatrical impulses, such as the conversational vocal patterns of Berg’s rhythmic Sprechstimme and the structural connections that Berg created between story and music. Her stage direction should, she said, make the audience hear the music more clearly by creating a series of images, like the sequence of storytelling images of stained-glass windows.
“The music is complex and difficult, absolutely,” she said, “but always when I’m in the room, rehearsing, it becomes so clear, so alive and moving. The experience of live music is always so much more tactile, rich, and present than it ever is on a recording. And I think it’s an amazing gift that people get to experience this opera live.”
Ms. Griffin is thrilled to have two Curtis alumni join the cast in lead roles, for the first time in recent memory. Shuler Hensley brings both acting and life experience to a demanding role that, Ms. Griffin notes, is not unlike his Tony-winning character of Jud in Oklahoma!—tortured and unhappy, yet capable of arousing incredible compassion.Jason Collins played the Drum Major with the Opera Festival of New Jersey in 2003, not long after graduating from Curtis. His “showy flair” caught the eye of the New York Times.
— by Laura C. Kelley
Special thanks to Laura C. Kelley and the Curtis Institute of Music for allowing the reprint of this article.
