AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

and the case’s notoriety thus stemmed from his plea of diminished responsibility, or the ‘insanity defence’. Under the banner of ‘wir arme leut’ (‘we poor folk’), Berg symbolically raises Wozzeck as a universal figure, creating a work that is one of the high points of German Expressionism. Berg creates three acts, each with five fast-paced scenes, each ...

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

Countess Geschwitz in tow, but her life as a prostitute is brought to an abrupt and bloody end when she unfortunately solicits one Jack the Ripper. Just as in Wozzeck, Berg ties this work together with a number of structural devices that operate on a subliminal level, while his masterful orchestration ranges from the dense and lush to ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

6 (1914–15), completed when he was 30, he was fully equipped for the sequence of masterpieces that occupied the remaining 20 years of his life. Later Works The opera Wozzeck (1917–22) is a pitying and angry study of the exploitation of an underdog, so powerfully moving, despite its advanced language, that its popular success made Berg financially ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

and the songs were not performed again until 1952. Shocking Subject Matter Unlike Schoenberg and Webern, Berg wrote in an instinctively theatrical style, and his first opera, Wozzeck, connects viscerally with the audience. The work was based on Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck (1836), which Berg saw in Vienna in 1914. Drawn to this work, he envisioned ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

In great demand as an opera singer and recitalist, Fischer-Dieskau was the most recorded baritone of the twentieth century. His opera work is remembered for roles such as Berg’s Wozzeck, Busoni’s Faust and Reimann’s Lear, for which he gave the first performance. He was not well suited to the Romantic Italian repertoire, but had a great affinity ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1890–1956 Austrian conductor In 1923, Kleiber was appointed music director of the Berlin State Opera, where he performed several new works, including Berg’s Wozzeck. He spent World War II in South America and conducted regularly at Covent Garden 1950–53. He made fine recordings of Le nozze di Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

1930–66 German tenor In a career lasting little more than a decade, Wunderlich established himself as Germany’s leading lyric tenor. After his Stuttgart Opera debut in 1955, he was spotted by conductor Karl Böhm, under whom he later recorded Mozart (Tamino in The Magic Flute), Strauss and Berg (Andres in Wozzeck). His other records included Schubert’s Die schöne ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1894–1981 Austrian conductor Music director of several German opera houses before World War II, Böhm was director of the Vienna State Opera 1943–45 and 1954–56. He championed Berg’s Wozzeck, and gave many performances of operas by Richard Strauss, who dedicated Daphne to him. He was also renowned for his interpretations of Mozart and Wagner. Introduction | Modern Era ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1934 American mezzo-soprano After three years in Europe, Horne sang Marie (Wozzeck) in San Francisco in 1960, repeating the role in her Covent Garden debut in 1964. She often sang with Sutherland, notably as Arsace in Semiramide (Rossini) and Adalgisa in Norma (Bellini). She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1970 as Adalgisa. She sang many Rossini ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

b. 1934, American One of the great mezzo-sopranos of the twentieth century, Horne studied with William Venard and dubbed the voice of Dorothy Dandridge in the 1954 film Carmen Jones. She was admired by Stravinsky, who invited her to perform in the 1956 Vienna Festival; she remained in Europe for three seasons at the Gelsenkirchen Opera. She returned ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

1913–94 Italian baritone Gobbi studied in Rome, and sang regularly at the Opera from 1938. He made his La Scala debut in 1942, when he also sang Berg’s Wozzeck in Rome. He made his US debut in San Francisco in 1948, and his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1956. He often appeared at Covent Garden, in roles by ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

baritone voice, although accomplished, was overshadowed by his magnificent stage presence. After studying in Rome and making his debut in 1935, he enjoyed his first success as Wozzeck in the 1942 Italian premiere of Berg’s opera. Gobbi’s La Scala debut also took place that year, and he became popular in London for his interpretations of Verdi roles ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Twentieth Century

three of them comprise what has come to be known as the Second Viennese School. Probably one of the finest pieces of expressionist music theatre, Berg’s atonal opera, Wozzeck (1922), is intriguingly structured, using old-fashioned formal models stripped of their tonal implications. His elegiac Violin Concerto (1935), one of the most lyrical ever written, was composed using ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

to the expression or exploration of ever-more powerful emotions. The corresponding artistic movement was Expressionism. Representative were the operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) by Richard Strauss (1864–1949), the opera Wozzeck (1914–20) by Alban Berg (1885–1935) and Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874–1951) monodrama Erwartung (‘Expectation’, 1909). In all these, dissonance, rhythmic unpredictability, use of extreme registers and melodic angularity reached ...

• Opera
• Modern Era

Spring are legendary, yet the opera world would have to wait another 12 years to experience that kind of boldness and theatricality in the form of Alban Berg’s (1885–1935) Wozzeck (composed 1917–1921). This opera, with its use of atonality and serialism and its story of an ordinary, troubled man, was nothing short of revolutionary. Erwartung (‘Expectation’, 1909), ...