London Coliseum, 11 May 2013

Where many directors have taken an expressionistic or even caricatured approach to Wozzeck, Carrie Cracknell creates a naturalistic narrative, driven by the horrors of warfare and the emotional damage which war does to society. Tom Scutt’s set is made up of claustrophobic rooms, tightly set on top of each other, with no sense of daylight or a world outside. Within this environment individuals seem uncomfortably real. Tom Randle’s Captain and James Morris’ Doctor, both finely sung, seem at ease within the seedy bars and illegal dealings which surround them, their quiet viciousness at one with the omnipresence of death. It is death which is the idée fixe of this production; military coffins are brought in and misused as much as venerated. Soldiers respond to the dullness of routine and boredom, with drink and drugs. It is all too plausible and becomes increasingly shocking for that very reason.

Within this environment Leigh Melrose’s Wozzeck tries to make sense of the world but we are forced to witness his emotional melt-down. It would be easy to justify this in terms of post traumatic stress, but that is not necessary in a world which does not care about the individual. Wozzeck cannot cope with the pressures he is under and eventually cracks. Leigh Melrose’s performance is a masterpiece of nuance, as we follow the gradual disintegration of a man who obviously has fine qualities but has no chance to make them work for him. Sara Jakubiak’s Marie is strongly sung and characterised, her relationship with Wozzeck always on a knife edge, with the day-to-day realities of making ends meet leading to a succession of affairs. Her growing involvement with Bryan Register’s bombastic Drum-Major is led as much by her own desires as it is by the need for money. It is unclear in this production if the child, a boy not quite in his teens, is actually Wozzeck’s own, given that they have only been together nine years.

Other solo parts are drawn from strength and the chorus are clearly individualised. The children, ghostly figures for much of the evening, are all too recognisably normal in the final scene, whose casual violence is all the more horrific.

Throughout the evening, the orchestra had been far more than an accompaniment to the action. Edward Gardner finds subtleties, in particular late romanticisms, in the score which I have never heard before. The climax at Wozzeck’s death is shattering and over-powering. The orchestra have been on splendid form all season, but have rarely been as good as this.

Berg’s masterpieces are all too rare in our opera houses, given their importance to the development of the genre in the twentieth century, so it has been a delight to welcome this new production alongside WNOs’ Lulu. BH

More performances until 25 May. www.eno.org