WNO has grown into its 2005 award-winning production of Berg's Wozzeck just as it has now fully embraced the virtues of what was then its new home in Cardiff Bay.
Wozzeck, the grim story of a hapless, helpless and put-upon soldier, was part of its opening season at the WMC.
This first revival, perhaps more than any other in the company's recent history, reproduces and intensifies the first-night excitements.
Lother Koenigs, WNO's new music director, is now in the pit to give a frenetic edge to the score without loss of clarity, and Christopher Purves returns to the title role with a more bullish presence. In two senses, Purves is Wozzeck.
Some may still chafe at the decision of director Richard Jones to transport the action to a baked-bean canning factory, but more than ever it seems cleverly justified.
It swops the military environment for an industrial one and suggests close parallels with soulless and brutalising environments - indeed, offers inflexions of the word 'regiment' that are wholly appropriate.
Exciting Polish soprano Wioletta Chodowicz is the new Marie, while Peter Hoare (Captain) and Clive Bayley (Doctor) reprise their roles as Wozzeck's anonymous tormenters, setting standards of expressionist delivery that are almost show-stealing.
Newport's Michael Clifton-Thompson returns as the Idiot in another of his pointed cameos, wearing the tin-can dunce's cap that raises a smile in an opera short on laughs.
Ashley Catling (Andres), Hubert Francis (Drum Major) and Sian Meinir (Margret) are also neatly-embedded newcomers.
See it - and be pleasantly shocked. |
