Wozzeck in Philadelphia

Philadelphia has stolen an operatic march on Manhattan. While the Metropolitan was lavishing its resources last week on the revival of Pietro Mascagni's sleazy Iris (Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, Tenor Beniamino Gigli), the enterprising Opera Company which Mary Louise Curtis Bok finances in Philadelphia was absorbed in preparations for the most important U. S. premiere of the season. On March 19 the music-wise will journey from miles around to hear Alban Berg's Wozzeck, for five years the talk of Europe. Not a singer but Conductor Leopold Stokowski is bound to be the hero of the occasion. Conductor Stokowski's enthusiasm for unusual stage productions was evidenced last year by his performances of Stravinsky's ballet, Le Sucre du Printemps and Schonberg's pantomime. Die Glueckliche Hand.* But Wozzeck will be his first straight opera, the forerunner of others to be done with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company next year.

Wozzeck's plot is surprisingly old to be the perfect counterpart of Berg's ultra-modern score. It was written nearly 100 years ago by Georg Buechner, a German poet-scientist who had ideas far ahead of his time. Buechner died at 23 in Zurich where he earned a doctorate with a treatise on the nervous system of fish. He left three plays: Leonce and Lena, written while authorities were hunting him for his revolutionary sympathies; Danton's Tod, given in the U. S. a few seasons ago by Max Reinhardt's troupe; Wozzeck, found in fragmentary form years after his death.

Into Wozzeck, Buechner worked all his tense, young pity for the downtrodden. Wozzeck is a poor bewildered soldier, stationed in a small German city in peacetime. His captain bullies him, a crackbrain doctor experiments on him, his mistress philanders with the drum-major, who has chest like a bull and a beard like a lion." Twenty-six terse, stark scenes tell the tragedy. Wozzeck stabs his mistress, drowns himself. At the end, while the news is gibbered through the streets, their child rides about on his hobbyhorse.

Composer Alban Berg started his Wozzeck music in 1914 but then like all good Austrians he went away to war. His finished work, condensed to 15 scenes, shows clearly the teachings of Arnold Schoenberg, according to whose ultra doctrine it is enough for music to describe the adventures of themes. With great skill Berg has woven a pattern of absolute forms, in the first act used a Suite and a Passacaglia with 21 variations, in the second a five-movement symphony, in the third a series of inventions. Like Schoenberg he used the combination of song and speech which the Germans call sprechstimme. But behind his strict design and his many novel effects (in one scene he introduces an accordion, harmonica and guitar), there is the same savage pity that Buechner had for his soldier. One European critic has called Wozzeck the greatest opera since Pelleas et Melisande. Stokowski must also be impressed, for his avidity for perfection appears to be even greater than usual. He is using his own 100-piece Philadelphia Orchestra, sets by Robert Edmond Jones and, thanks to Mrs. Bok's open purse, has already had well over 100 rehearsals.

* In April, again in collaboration with the League of Composers, he will direct performances of Stravinsky's opera-oratorio, Oedipus Rex, Prokofiev's ballet, Pas d'Acier, in Philadelphia and Manhattan.

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