Volume 27, Number 18 · November 20, 1980
An 'Unheard of Intensity'
By Robert Craft
The Operas of Alban Berg Vol. I: Wozzeck
by George Perle
University of California Press, 231 pp., $20.00
After Wozzeck had won comparatively wide acclaim, Berg stated that '…the social problems of the opera by far transcend the personal destiny of Wozzeck.' But surely Berg was too great an artist to believe this and not to recognize that the tragedies of Wozzeck, Marie, and their illegitimate child far transcend sociology. Even on this level the composer does not do justice to his achievement, since the opera indicts not a particular society, but the condition humaine; the tormentors—the harebrained Captain, sadistic Doctor, bullying Drum Major—are also victims, prisoners of their circumstances and personalities, and, as such, more pathetic than evil. The subjects of universal drama are not theses and philosophies, but human beings.
Review, 3238 words
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