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

 

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photo: David Cooper

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Terry Hodges as The Doctor and
Benoit Boutet as The Captain
photo: David Cooper

We all of us are on the outside, even though we don't always realize it ourselves.
director's note

Wozzeck and Marie have two things in common - a child, and loneliness. Both are isolated from their social environment. Wozzeck has become cut off from his surroundings and as a consequence he becomes increasingly lost in himself.
People who have been through a traumatic experience sometimes shut themselves off in their own world. It seems as if they do not want any part in social life, but really they are longing for just that. The same is true for Wozzeck.

Ted Baerg as Wozzeck and
Marion Newman as Margret
photo: David Cooper

the borders between reality and vision dissolve

In his isolated, mentally and physically unbalanced state, Wozzeck has horrifying supernatural visions of an approaching doomsday. He tries to communicate these experiences to the others. He warns them, although he himself does not understand the meaning of his visions. No one pays attention to his predictions. To them, his words are strangely curious, but nobody really listens, nobody stops for a moment to pay attention to him and to what he has to say.

The only thing that Wozzeck is able to cling to is his relationship with Marie, but even this is far from secure. Wozzeck's strange behaviour serves only to propel Marie towards the seductive charms of the Drum Major.

When the Doctor and Captain inform Wozzeck about Marie's adultery the borders between reality and vision dissolve. Wozzeck recognizes in everything elements which we associate with the last ordeal. Wozzeck senses that hell is taking over the world.





being on the outside

We have more in common with Wozzeck than we would like to believe. We all know that feeling of being on the outside. And do we not know the feeling of somehow being cut off from the world? Do we not often feel both consciously and unconsciously misunderstood and misinterpreted? In such situations we cling to the certainties of our life. And if these certainties begin to topple or fall apart, the likelihood is that we fall with them.

When Wozzeck's only certainty, Marie, threatens to disappear, he panics. A terrible mechanism of destruction kicks in. His incapacity to face the situation drives him to kill her. And so Wozzeck severs the final string which keeps him connected to the world and with this deed he completes the realization of his own predictions. His world has come to an end.

Playwright Georg Büchner explains his choice of characters in his letter from February 1834:

I don't make judgements on anyone, least of all for their intelligence or education, because it is in no one's power not to turn out a fool or a criminal, just because we humans - given the same circumstances - would all become like one another.

Wim Trompert

 

Conductor: Timothy Vernon
Director: Wim Trompert
Set designer: Leslie Frankish
Costumes: Leslie Frankish
Lighting: Robert Thomson
Victoria Symphony Orchestra
Pacific Opera Chorus
Chorus Master: Robert Holliston