Mr. Tandberg, WOZZECK is based on one of the most important dramas in world literature. How important is Büchner's Woyzeck to your perspective of Berg's opera?
My path to Berg began with Büchner. After all, at the age of 19 I was up on the stage in the role of Woyzeck. That was just for a school production and without any knowledge of professional acting, but perhaps that made my approach to the title character all the more profound. Especially because at the time I had not yet experienced Wozzeck's existential experiences, I did everything I could to empathise with his fear, his jealousy and desperation, which ultimately drive him to murder Marie, and to identify with his terrible life. But I still remember well how I ran around in an old barn at night, pouring beans into myself by the pound and yelling with a full mouth so that I could become closer to Wozzeck.

And today, more than forty years later, where do you feel the special quality of the subject matter lies?
Büchner's Woyzeck is still revolutionary in the audacity of its form. I feel that its radicalism is a consequence of its minimalism. The 26 fragments of the piece include only the dramatic essence of theatre scenes, and they only present what is necessary for the dramatic statement in a concentrated, condensed form. That is why they are often so short, and some of the scenes are already over by the time they have truly begun. This concentration is best compared to bouillon cubes: small, but extremely full of content. I believe this density immediately gave Berg the idea of a musical rendering when he saw the work on the stage in May 1914. He felt that the spoken lines were merely the tip of the iceberg, and a score gave him the opportunity to illustrate the hidden portion of this iceberg and to delve beneath the surface of the language. Actually that is why I feel that the opera is somewhat easier to stage than the play – the music shows many simultaneously present levels of feeling that are imparted to the audience through listening.

Yet Berg did not only add a musical depth to the subject, but also compressed the piece from 26 scenes to 15. How much has that changed the character of the piece?
For me, Büchner's Woyzeck is simply the play about alienation – about the existential loneliness that all of us feel somewhere at the base of our souls. About the realisation that we are only surrounded by the endless emptiness of a universe, a huge nothing. Büchner tells us this in the grandmother's narration in which a child ascends to the moon and sun and discovers that both are just empty shells. Then the child comes back down to Earth and cries. For Büchner it is infinitely bleak. Characteristically, Berg did not select this scene for the musical score. That is because he changes the message. Indeed for Berg there remains no hope whatsoever for Wozzeck and the last scene with the children makes it unmistakably clear that this fate will repeat for the coming generation. Yet his music gives us consolation in that it has compassion for the people, just like Agnes always declares in Strindberg's Dream Play. Even if there is no God, there is still the music that alleviates our pain in the face of the inevitability of our death and the nothingness of our existence, letting us feel that we are not alone. That is why the music returns to tonality after Wozzeck's death in the last big orchestral interlude.

In the opera we quickly come to see Wozzeck as a person who has difficulty differentiating between the outer reality and his apocalyptic visions. Is he essentially a hopeless case from the start?
Wozzeck's fundamental problem is that he is looking for this meaning in life that, according to Büchner, does not exist. Every other character has something that they hold onto, just like everybody looks for meaning in life to justify their existence, to give their lives meaning. In the opera, characters like the captain, the doctor and the drum major simultaneously represent such construed meanings. One believes in authority, the other in science, the third in the simple right of the strongest. Only Wozzeck and Marie are searching, each in their own way. That is why they are at the centre of the play. Wozzeck despairs of the impossibility of comprehending life, also because life has only provided him with old-fashioned explanations like the Bible, old fairy tales or conspiracy theories. Marie tries to give her life meaning through sensory experience, only to later feel regret because she acted against behavioural norms impressed upon her during childhood. And the tragedy of the play is that we feel how little is missing for these two to be able to find the meaning of their lives in togetherness, including with their child.

Because actually the relationship with Marie is at first the only thing that has meaning to Wozzeck.
Yes, he takes on all the work he can to keep his family fed. "That's why I do it!" he tells us directly. His already precarious state intensifies his fear when this bridge to life also threatens to collapse. For me, Wozzeck's murder of Marie constitutes his last possible attempt at taking back that which is vanishing and obtaining a type of security that has otherwise already been lost.

That is reminiscent of Don José in CARMEN, the opera that you most recently staged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Of course, for José the death of Carmen is the only way to possess a beloved woman who wants to protect her independence. Yet for me it's important to show that Marie's longing for sexual freedom is entirely legitimate, and that sex with another man does not mean the end of the world. Still she loves Wozzeck, and as 21st-century people we can generally distinguish that to an extent. Even if it's difficult to find one another again after what has happened, that would still be possible for Wozzeck and Marie. This makes it all the more tragic that they do not succeed.

There is a ring of characters around these two people in the opera who – as was already mentioned – represent certain approaches to life. How real are these characters?
Berg depicts them as alienated, but in no way can this mean that the doctor, the captain and the others are intended to be mere caricatures. We encounter them in very real, deliberately everyday circumstances: the doctor during an examination, the captain drinking beer at a bar, Andres at work. Only we often see them from Wozzeck's perspective, so it's distorted. They instantly turn into monsters, and then return to normal conversation. It's critical that we should also be just as uncertain of Wozzeck as these characters are. But they must certainly have a certain level of flesh and blood, just like they have real, human feelings like fear, curiosity or vanity. This multi-facetedness is what makes them interesting for the theatre.

Your staging of WOZZECK takes place in neither an expressionist fantasy world, nor in 19^th-century soldier society, but rather on a certain specifiable day at an exactly localisable place. What convinced you to make Norwegian Independence Day in Oslo the setting?
First it was important for us to anchor the play in the modern day. Because WOZZECK is about fundamental questions and fears that still move us today. Every one of us could become Wozzeck if fate so chooses. That is why a performance should not establish historical distance, but rather make clear that this story could also happen among us directly. So we looked for scenery that is clearly current, but which also naturally does the purpose of the play justice and which also offers a plausible framework for the transitions between brutal reality and surrealist episodes. We struck gold here at home, in a bear near the royal palace in Oslo, in the middle of a park with ponds. There you find the famous soldiers of the palace guard, famous for their choreographed drills, including their captains and drum majors, as well as many people who simply drink a lot or want to otherwise amuse themselves. And on Norwegian Independence Day, 17 May, you also see the children marching up toward the castle with their parade, as has been the custom since 1945. But at the same time, in Norway this day is essentially the signal for spring. During this season you experience a sudden explosion of green, and the people feel the full power of their instinctual nature. In that regard it's actually perfect for WOZZECK.

Wozzeck © Marcus Lieberenz

 

Could it also be added that Wozzeck's brooding over the meaning of human existence is very Scandinavian? Through his obsessiveness he is almost reminiscent of Norwegian bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgard.
Certainly. And Knausgard would easily have turned into Wozzeck had he not discovered writing. And he himself describes in his cycle of novels how he almost murdered his brother. But then he found art. And the consolation that it can provide. Even when there is no hope.