Wozzeck

Music by Alban Berg
Libretto by Alban Berg

production:
Pacific Opera Victoria
Timothy Vernon - Artistic Director
David Devan - General Manager

Cast:
The Captain: Benoit Boutet - Wozzeck: Theodore Baerg - Andres: Terence Mireau - Marie: Jean Stilwell - Margret: Marion Newman - The Doctor: Terry Hodges - The Drum Major: John David de Haan - First Artisan: Angus Bell - Second Artisan: Richard Devillier - The Idiot: Graham Croft - A Soldier: Jamie Rose - Marie's Child: Shelby Kutyn / Elanor Teel

Conductor: Timothy Vernon
Director: Wim Trompert
Set and Costume Designer: Leslie Frankish
Lighting Designer: Robert Thomson
Chorus Master: Robert Holliston

With the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, The Pacific Opera Chorus and the Victoria's Children's Chorus

Victoria, Canada February 13, 15, 20, 22, 2003

'Brilliantly inventive stage direction'

'A risk pays off'

'A theatricality rare of the art form'

reviews

Elissa Pool in 'The Globe and Mail'
A risk pays off for Pacific Opera

A provincial opera company takes a risk when it stages an opera like this one. Nonetheless, Pacific Opera Victoria took that risk, premiering its superb new production of Berg's masterpiece on Thursday to a full house. [...] Power, personified in this opera by both the Captain and the Doctor, is so real, and so insidious, it can only be caricatured. Thus theirs is the madness of privilege, while Wozzeck's is the madness of desperation, a point Wim Trompert's direction made explicit and extremely effective.

Feb 14, 2003
 

Susan Down in 'Times Colonist'
Wozzeck provides opera of the absurd

[...] At a taut 90 minutes, POV's production was a potent package of excellent character acting, achingly sad music and vocals and a symbol-rich set that delivered its message of inhumanity like a bullet clean through the heart.
[...] it is definitely worth seeing this production, directed by Wim Trompert.

Feb. 15, 2003

David Lennam in 'Victoria News'
Wozzeck soars with score

[...] Devoid of many of the trappings opera fans have come to expect, this deliciously dark piece boats no memorable songs, scenes, characters or costumes and, in a way, is almost a celebration that is anti-opera.
Instead, 'Wozzeck' titillates with a soaring score, expressionist sets and a theatricality rare for the art form. Alban Berg's contemporary opera, sung in German and based on a play by Georg Büchner, made its debut in 1925 and is gloriously revived by the POV. Dutch director Wim Trompert understands the shock-horror of the plot and pushes his singers to actually act, which they do with great success.

Feb 19, 2005
 

Peter Symcox in 'Opera Canada'

[...] If the orchestra responded so splendidly to Vernon's guidance, so, too, did the cast. The chorus (never better) and principals alike played as if inspired by the brilliantly inventive stage direction of Wim Trompert, who brought out every nuance of meaning in the work.

summer 2003

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