New ‘Wozzeck’ Production to Be Staged at Music Center

David Alden, who has staged the new production of “Wozzeck” for Los Angeles Music Center Opera, is adamant that no one refer to this production of Alban Berg’s masterpiece as “updated.”

“It’s not an updating,” the compact, intense Alden insists, backstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“It’s present-day, it’s definitely now, but more important, it’s also abstracted and dreamlike.”

Elise Ross, who sings the role of Marie in Alden’s staging, describes the new production of the 20th-Century psychological drama, receiving its first performance Thursday night at the Music Center, as looking like “today in a dream.”

“It’s not like David’s previous productions--at least the two in Scotland that I was in--it’s singular because it’s less realistic,” she says.

Benjamin Luxon, a veteran of several “Wozzeck” productions, including the two Scottish stagings, says the new Music Center Opera offering is “kind of in the present--but it’s a surrealistic now. Let’s say it’s the ‘Wozzeck’ story in present-day terms, in the era of ‘Apocalypse Now.’ ”

“Wozzeck,” first performed in 1925, has become a specialty of David Alden, who says he has staged the work 15 times in the last 10 years, including a 1985 production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. As an acknowledged masterpiece, the work can take a lot of approaches, Alden believes, even one harking back to a style once popular.

“Expressionism is back,” the stage director announces, giving this production--with sets and costumes designed by Alden’s longtime collaborator, David Fielding, and lighting by Marie Barrett--as an example of “modern expressionism. It’s like a strange modern painting, with dirty, violent, cold, urban images.”

The basic thrust of Berg’s powerful attraction to the drama of “Wozzeck” was, according to Alden, “Berg’s real hatred of the army--in this case the Prussian army. That was a big part of his motivation.” (Berg adapted the story from Georg Buchner’s 1837 play, which in turn was based on a true story about a military man ground down by the system who turns on those around him, with tragic results.)

The place of “Wozzeck” in history has long been assured, says Simon Rattle, who will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the pit of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for these five performances (through Dec. 11). The 33-year-old principal guest conductor of the Philharmonic says, unequivocally, “If I had to name the greatest opera of the century, it would probably have to be this. Even over ‘Pelleas’ and the Janacek operas.

“Of all the important music-theater pieces of our time, it looks forward the most. Musically, it’s the most complete synthesis of the past, and it’s also the most theatrical. The text is miraculous.”

In practical terms, too, Rattle says, the great compression of Berg’s writing is “an enormous achievement. It’s actually the shortest hour and a half in the business.” For once, that particular achievement will be demonstrable: the performances, in German with English supertitles, will be given without intermission.

Rattle praises Alden’s insight into the piece--this is the stage director’s fifth new production--and the depth of his knowledge of it.

“David knows it so well, he’s been known to correct notes in the orchestral parts,” the conductor reports. “He’s got a colossal, dangerous imagination.”

Luxon, when asked how he approaches the role of Wozzeck, answers, “I don’t really change with each production, though I can see how each new staging changes things around me.

“But one cannot change the specifics of Wozzeck’s character, or emotions. He is the same, whatever the surroundings--even surreal ones. And the role is one of the great singing parts of this century.”

But what makes “Wozzeck” still contemporary, Luxon says, is that “this is also the story of the total destruction of a human being--and it happens to someone who is not aware of what is going on. And, as the play unfolds, we begin to see that Wozzeck himself is the only sane one in a world of maniacs. He’s a natural man, a simple person in that he sees only one thing at a time, even though his feelings may be complex.”

Asked where and when “Wozzeck” actually takes place, Gotz Friedrich, writing in a program note for the Houston Grand Opera production in 1982, answered:

“Always and everywhere, as long as arrogance and stupidity, clothed in a military uniform, threatens the dignity of a human being, and where a defenseless creature destroys its own happiness and itself.”