Wozzeck at Lyric Opera

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...One can't imagine a more convincing case for "Wozzeck" as a masterpiece of 20th-century music theater than the highly anticipated new production that opened at Lyric on Sunday afternoon at the Civic Opera House. A superb ensemble cast and orchestra bring out all the unsettling beauty of Berg's great score, just as the gritty naturalism of McVicar's staging brings us face to face with real, pitiable people destroyed by remorseless circumstance."

Chicago Stage Review - Highly Recommended

"...Subtly designed to impress upon the audience the physical and psychological desolation that foments both rebellion and surrender, Lyric Opera's Wozzeck is a revelation. Visually powerful and musically stunning, this production could be the sleeper hit of a season that has already promised many "don't miss" moments."

Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended

"...The Lyric Opera’s soaring new production of “Wozzeck” is set amid the rubble of the First World War’s aftermath, corresponding exactly to the years when Vienna-born composer Alban Berg penned its words and music. Berg began working on “Wozzeck” in 1914 after seeing a production of the unfinished 19th-century stage play called “Woyzeck,” by Georg Büchner. It drew the portrait of a low-ranking working class soldier, dehumanized by the brutality of military life, who commits murder in a jealous rage."

Stage and Cinema - Somewhat Recommended

"...The dissonant, unsettling music of the Second Viennese School is definitely not to everyone's taste, but for some, it will be Wozzeck's principal attraction. And they will not be disappointed. The opera boasts an excellent, if largely unknown, cast led by Tomasz Konieczny in the title role. Joining him are three Germans, Angela Denoke as Marie, Gerhard Siegel as the captain, and Stefan Vinke as the drum major, and British bass Brindley Sherratt, recently seen at Lyric as Don Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro, as the bean-shoveling Doctor."

ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended

"...Sir Andrew Davis's magnificent accomplishment is that he, too, honors that episodic quality in each of the fifteen scenes, yet blends the brass-heavy atonal score with occasional melodic string interjections into a cohesive whole, which is reminiscent of the fluctuations of a heartbeat. At one hundred minutes long, the opera is just the right length; anymore and the music and design would overstay their welcome, but any less, and the atmosphere and story would not be done justice."

The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended

"...WOZZECK is a tight one hundred minute examination of humanity. Operas always bring a certain amount of raging tragedy. I'm ready for that. It's opera after all. This one, however, has an unforgettable menacing tone. The administering of pain isn't emotional. It's calculated. And that makes this opera even more unsettling."