Credits:

Teodor Currentzis

Description:

Tcherniakov’s razor-sharp Wozzeck, a triumphCurrentzis and the Bolshoi at white heat, with Nigl unhinged from first to lastA notable production now available on video. Dmitri Tcherniakov, on blistering form at present, directs Berg’s masterpiece Wozzeck, and the result more than lives up to expectations. The setting is a present-day middle-class apartment block: twelve flats (of which we see one room each) with a large bar on the ground floor. Wozzeck is a salaryman-like tenant, the Captain an army obsessive, the Doctor a mad-scientist type, and Wozzeck is deranged from beginning to end. Tcherniakov depicts with great acuity “the abnormality that lives quietly alongside the everyday”, and where a normal staging tends to release its tension after Marie’s murder and Wozzeck’s drowning, he holds our attention right to the end with a characteristically individual perspective.The performance it